Navigating the Customer Experience

Alan Williams is the founder of SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL and advises business leaders internationally to deliver value driven service. 

Dave Stubberfield is the director of Carter Consultancy and specializes in enabling cultural transformation to help businesses achieve greatness. They are the authors of Supercharging the Customer Experience: How Organizational Alignment Drives Performance.  

Questions

· We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today.

· Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards?

· What are maybe two or three behaviors that you believe is critical for customer success in a business both from an employee perspective and from the leadership perspective.

· So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction?

· So, can you also share, and each of you can give me your answer to this particular question. What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

· If you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity.

· Now, can you also share with us what's the one thing that is going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

· Where can listeners find you online?

· Now, before we close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Alan and Dave’s Journey

Me: We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today.

Alan Williams: Alan shared that he started off in commercial hospitality management. So, he remembered being at school thinking, he wants to go to university, but he wants to do a degree that's going to help him get a job. 

And he really didn't like the idea of what he at that time considered to be really boring businesses like banking, where you're sat in an office all day. And he was lucky enough to get a holiday job in a hotel, and he thought that's it, exciting, looking after people, fun. 

So, that was the beginning. And then he moved somewhat later in his career into workplace management. So you might know it as facilities management, so all of the services in workplaces offices, and he referred to them those offices actually, as they're really hotels with desks instead of beds, that's the only difference. And then he set up SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL in 2005, and he’s been helping progressive leaders in organizations around the world since then, using what he learned in the hospitality sector. 

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he guesses similar to a degree. So, he was just about leaving school and the careers advisor said, you've got the potential to go to university, but he didn't really know what for. So, he decided against it and tried the apprenticeship route in the corporate space, which he loved, and a lot of customer facing roles. Then there was an initiative called Lean, where he became kind of a Six Sigma qualified individual. And then it just kind of spiraled into attaching customer experience to the continuous improvement framework, really. And how changes adapt in organizations. And then, 2020 set up Carter Consultancy, and he hasn't looked back since. So yeah, he loves what he does.

About Alan and Dave’s Book – Supercharging the Customer Experience and Three Overarching Themes the Book Focuses On

Me: All right, thank you so much, gentleman. Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners and either of you can answer this question, a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards?

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he’s known Alan for a few years now. But it just so happens that they were interested in creating a customer experience development programme for the BQF, The British Quality Foundation. And the President kind of joined them together and said, “Look, you're both trying to achieve the same things.” So very, very quickly, during their initial meeting, they realized that they are very aligned in how they think and what they wanted to achieve. And through the development of that programme, and Alan out of the blue turns and he said to Dave, “This has got the makings of a great book. Do you want to write one?” And like a rabbit in the headlights, he just kind of froze, and then said, “Yes, let's do that.” 

And so, through Alan's guidance from his previous experience of being an author, he's brought him on that journey with him and he’s really, really enjoyed it. And the foundation to the book really stemmed from the training, the development programme they put together, which is really all about putting CX into context. They believe there's a lot of content out there. He’s going to leave Alan to drop the question in a second, but they believe there's a lot of content out there. But they believe that the actual application of customer experience doesn't happen as frequently as it should, which led us to the question, Alan?

Alan Williams: Alan shared that's right. When they were thinking about the book, they were thinking, well, how is this book going to be any different to all of the others out there on the topic of customer experience? Because don't know if you've checked, but there's just like so many books on the topic. And they just found themselves with this question, which is, “With all the content on the topic that's out there, why is great customer experience so rare?” It doesn't make sense if there's all that resource out there to guide people. 

And that was what Dave's just touched on there that the problem, and the challenge is that so much of the time people are focused on content, and knowledge, rather than the practical application of that knowledge on a day in day out basis. And that's why the great customer experience is so rare. And in the book, they provide a framework that helps you whatever sector you're in, wherever you are in the world, whatever the size of your organization provides you with a framework that can help to guide you create your own customer experience strategy that suits your own particular individual circumstances.

Me: All right, so let's use a use example, a use case, I like the fact that you gentleman said that you want to focus on the practical because you are very correct. There are many, many books out there on CX and EX. And you read the content, and it's focused on knowledge, the definitions, the theory, but how does that really work with an organization, with people, with their behaviour, we getting them motivated with having them intrinsically applying that in every single interaction regardless of the channel that they're serving the customer on. So, you can choose a business, I will leave it up to you in terms of the use case, just give us an example of based on the framework that you have in the book, how does this really apply to a business?

Alan Williams: Alan shared that he’s not even going to choose a particular business. He thinks that sometimes when you do that, you're kind of dragged into generalization. So, he’s just going to tell you a story. And it was a business that he was working in and they focused really hard on everybody that was in the organization understanding that they were part of delivering a great customer service and their job was to make their customers and clients feel important, that was the reason that they were all there. 

And he remembered on reception, they were expecting a guy attending a very important meeting. And so obviously, they knew in advance that he was arriving, and they have pre-prepared a name badge, they also aimed to greet people before they introduce themselves in this particular environment. And so that happened, the receptionist greeted the gentleman by name, but they had not expected one thing, and that is that he brought with him a small terrier dog. Now, the receptionist actually said to him, complimented him on the dog, and then said, “And now Sir, if you could just lift him up in front of the camera.” and produce a name badge for the dog. And the guy went into the meeting room and announced to the people from the client organization, “That is the best welcome I've ever had anywhere in the world.” And then the meeting was a great success, down to that receptionist. So, the reason he loves that story is because it really emphasizes the importance of people understanding the big why they're there, rather than getting consumed and distracted with the small tasks that they might have to do in order to satisfy them.

Behaviours that are Critical for Customer Success in a Business from an Employee Perspective and from the Leadership Perspective

Me: Now, based on your research, and your experience, both of you in the CX space, if you were to choose maybe two or three behaviours that you believe is critical for customer success in a business, and I'm not just talking from the employee perspective, but also from the leadership perspective, like what are the three key behaviours that will more than likely lead to a culture where people have that customer centric mindset, regardless of the type of customer, how complex the problem or issue might be, but they're always driven by that because of those core behaviours. Would you be able to identify what those if you were to pick three, what those would be?

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he can start with one for sure. And the one that leaps out with him is Empathy. And that runs from a kind of a customer facing team into the customer, but like you said, it's the leadership into to the rest of the teams and the organization. He thinks having that empathetic understanding of what people might be trying to do, or what they're going through, is so powerful. 

And we're stepping into the realms of emotional intelligence here. And to the point that Alan's just made in that in that story, which is fantastic. People have to buy into that, right. So, they have to buy into that culture of trying to achieve and deliver that experience, not once but every single time. And he thinks that starts with a lot of empathy. He knows some leaders that are not very empathetic, shall we say, and don't understand why they can't achieve the results they want to achieve, not only in the business, but in the customer experience space as well. So, he would lead with empathy being one of the most powerful ones because it unlocks so much. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all?

Alan Williams: Alan shared that he'll go with number two, though, which he thinks is about positivity. So, when a customer asks you for something, the answer is yes. And it might not be exactly what they were expecting or had asked for. But how often do you hear, no, can't do that. And that's really not a good start to a conversation. So, he'd follow empathy with Positivity.

Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated that he would go number three is probably Communication. And that he guesses all ties everything up together nicely. He thinks sometimes, again, starting at the top with leadership, they might send a message once, whether it's via email, or it could be in person, it could be a presentation, and some people think that they can just deliver that message once and everyone gets it and understand it, it needs to be reinforced, it needs to become part of the embedded as part of the DNA of the organization. And that message needs to be repeated so it's understood and lived every single day. And he thinks having a great deal of empathy, and positivity, it just needs to be reinforced through communication, he personally believes.

Alan Williams: Alan asked can they give you just one extra one as a bit of added value. So, he'd go with Obsessive Attention to Detail. And this is kind of every person, every day, every minute, because consistency is what makes the great businesses set apart from those that are good some of the time. And that's because everybody in the organization knows the fine detail of what's required, and is then committed to delivering that every single time.

Me: All right, so Empathy, Positivity, Vommunication and Obsessive Attention to detail. Okay, thank you so much, gentlemen. 

Insight on the Future of AI and How it Will Impact Human Interaction

Me: Now, I liked the fact that most of what you talked about focuses on people, focuses on behaviour, focuses on relationships, practical things that we can see, things that we do every day. I found, and I'm sure you've seen it as well, that in the last, I would say, maybe two or three years or even before but definitely in the last two or three years, there has been a lot of emergence in the space of technology with artificial intelligence. And I find that organizations sometimes may not necessarily be integrating it or using it in the best way possible to ensure that it's not replacing humans, but more so helping humans that can really help the overall experience. 

And I'll give you an example. Over the weekend, I had a friend that has a mobile modem and we were having some issues adding some data to it and we called our local telecommunication company, reached out to them through their website. Actually no, we did it through their app that was on the phone, but the app has a Bot at the top and the bots name was Ruby. But Ruby can't answer any questions, Ruby doesn't remember what you told her before. And so, you tell Ruby, I'd like to speak with a representative, Ruby starts a conversation again, “Please provide me with your name and account number. Please tell me exactly what your query is about.” And I told Ruby that before and I felt like I was going in circles, it was just crazy. So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction?

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that it's really interesting. And they cover a lot of this in the book. And honestly, you could spend hours upon hours doing research. And he kind of immersed himself into this. You're spot on, AI is kind of forefront of technology at the minute, everyone seems to be dipping into it. You've also got augmented reality that people are looking at as well and they are fantastic things, and it's just incredible what some of these things can do. The problem that organizations have today is they see something shiny, something sparkly and go, right, we need that. And they try and integrate it and it's just kind of a lift and shift, kind of slot it into a place, and it fits in just or they've squeezed things around, and they go perfect. We can take our AI integration box off, we've done that. 

But like you've just said there, there's not been any kind of sort of thinking or thought process around how we actually integrate that to the all of the other services and ways of communication that we have as an organization, that omni channel element hasn't been considered, we just see AI as a way potentially to do something with generative text, for example. And we go yep, okay, we can we can get that in, we can do that there, and boom, it's done. It's thinking about the entire process. 

And he thinks another element to that is, let's say one organization in a certain industry does something that's quite revolutionary. Other companies in the same industry or even outside the industry might try and replicate that and they haven't considered how they operate as an organization, the value they deliver to their customers, and if it actually works. He thinks a lot of people feel like they might miss the boat if they don't sort of get on board with the technology bus, because it's just constantly changing. So, there's a lot of risk when it comes to technology, you need to do your research, your homework and what fits for the business. 

And for him, it's thinking about it from a people point of view, technology's forefront of the minute AI, you name it, there's lots it can do. But it needs to work for people. And that's the thing, really, he thinks sometimes isn't considered. So, that would be his thought. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all.

Alan Williams: Alan shared that he thinks that the issue is that people consider technology to be an alternative solution, whereas in fact, it should just be a support to people. So, when you've got predictability and high volume, then sure, he thinks technology can be a massive help in that sort of situation. But where you've got unpredictability, and perhaps volume that is up and down, then it's much less helpful. And it might be that a human being could deal with that much, much better. So, the big thing, though, is this thing about technology being a tool, rather than the be all and end all and he liken it to a scalpel, a scalpel in the hands of a really experienced surgeon can save people's lives. But in the hands of somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can be really dangerous. And it's the same with tech and customer experience.

App, Website or Tool that Alan and Dave Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Their Businesses

When asked about an online resource that they can’t live without in their business: 

Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated what a question. He’s going to be totally contradictory to what he just said, he going to go ChatGPT. So, he uses that as a bit of a sounding board, really. So, in his organization, it's just him. So, sometimes when he has a bit of an idea, he thinks, “Oh, okay, maybe I should post it on social media or I should do this and have a bit of an idea.” He will often ask Alan because they are very alike, but sometimes he will just put a bit of a question into ChatGPT and asked for maybe what's relevant or how he should do a certain thing. And knowing that it's not always 100% accurate, he uses that as kind of as a gauge really to see if he’s on the right track. 

It's funny, he will put something into ChatGPT, for example. Let's say he wanted to do a LinkedIn post this week and he might say, “Give me five myths about customer experience that we can debunk.” And he might find one of them, he goes, “Well, that's not a myth at all. That's the complete truth.” So, he might swing it in a way that he thinks is his own personal view and opinion. And he uses that as kind of a something to generate a bit of a conversation with himself rather than just talking to the brick wall. So for him, he quite often uses ChatGPT, he would say he’s using it daily, which is, it's mad really how it's become so prominent in people's lives.

Alan Williams: Alan shared that he’s going to add to his CV that Dave asked him before ChatGPT that’d go down really well. His, is his Outlook Calendar. He’s a bit too reliant on this. Basically, if it's not on the calendar, he’s not there. And occasionally, he was telling somebody just the other day how he was just about to go into a lunch meeting and he got a message from somebody saying, “Really looking forward to seeing you for lunch today.” And he had to have a very quick lunch meeting and then get to the other one and not tell the person. But his calendar is his.

Me: So, Calendar and ChatGPT. Excellent.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Alan and Dave

Me: Now, I usually ask the question, what book or books have had the biggest impact on you? I noticed in your book, which I love about how the layout of the book was done, that at the end of each chapter, you have a little box that says, “Want to know more” with resources in the form of articles and books that the reader can access if they want to gain additional information. I think that's brilliant. But I will still ask it. So, if you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity.

Alan Williams: When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Alan shared that his is a long time ago, actually. So, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. So, basically, this is about making sure that your business is balanced and looking after all of the different stakeholder groups, rather than being just focused on generating profit. And over the years, that kind of sentiment he thinks has grown into triple quadruple bottom line ESG, all of the terms that are given to it, but basically a very, very similar message in that you're managing your business holistically, rather than just to generate profits. So, that's his.

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he’s got a few that springs to mind. And the one he’s going to talk about most prominently is the one he’s listened to recently is the One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard. This was a recommendation to him, he’s heard it and seen the sites all around, but he’s never actually taken the time to listen to it. So, that for him was really, really interesting because it talks about trying to do things in a minute, setting goals that people can read in a minute. Having reviews whether it's positive or negative in a minute, so you can redirect people or praise people. And he thinks a lot of us get bogged down in just day to day life, that everything becomes much more intense than it needs to be. So, that One Minute Manager for him, it was talking specifically about managing a team in an organization. But he thinks you can apply it to absolutely anything. So, that's the one he’s listened to most recently that has been phenomenal and eye opening for me.  

One that he would like to call out that he’s previously listened to is The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler. So, coaching is a part of what he does and t that was something that really helped him and kind of confirmed to him and validate that he can do what he’s doing, which was amazing, because he had a lot of doubt at the time when he started if he’s a massive suffer of the imposter syndrome. So, that was really good for him personally. 

And the other one he was considering? It was, Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And In Your Life by Spencer Johnson, which is just he thinks it's a staple, if you haven't read or listened to that, then go and listen to that. That's phenomenal.

What Alan and Dave are Really Excited About Now!

Alan Williams: When asked about something that they are excited about Alan shared that this is going to be boring to some people, because the CX in context development programme, he’s thrilled about this, because they've started to deliver to clients, and the feedback has just been fantastic. And people are just saying, this is a real eye opener, because CX cannot just be treated in isolation, it is inextricably connected to other parts of the business. And this framework helps them to do that in a really simple to understand way and a very practical way. When he gets that sort of feedback, it makes him feel that it's been worth putting together what they've put together because it's good to be able to help so many people out there.

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he could quite easily say the same thing. But he’s going to be different. So, he would say in the past 18 months, he’s been developing an online tool that's called Nova. And Nova is a way and means of teams, organizations to measure how well they are implementing continuous improvement in their business, or in their team or in their organization. And that is something he’s done for a long time and he used to do it by an Excel spreadsheet. And talking to a friend of his, he said, “Dave, why on earth are you using a spreadsheet in this day and age?” And he kind of sat back and thought, “Okay, I should practice what I preach here and change what I do.” And it's led to this tool, which he personally believes is cutting edge. 

So, basically, it's an assessment that each team would do in an organization, it will give them a score, it will give them actions to do, it will give industry insights as well, based on the information that's been provided, just so that it can help the team progress. That then creates an aggregated score up to the leadership, and that can be viewed across the leadership peers and the group. So, if you've got an entire organization, you've got a continuous improvement score, essentially, for the entire organization with industry insights that help drive the improvement of that organization and with Alan's help, they're going to look at introducing customer experience to that later in the year. 

They've also got plans to introduce change management as well, as well as vision values, employee engagement, they see this as a potential game changer tool that can disrupt organizations for the better. So, a lot of positive to come from that. And that's not long been launched really, the start of this year and they've seen some really, really interesting returns on investment as well. So, fingers crossed that’s one for the future.

Me: That sounds amazing, Dave. Is that available to anyone in the public? Or it's still in beta?

Dave shared that it's available to absolutely everyone and anyone that might be a little bit unsure, a little bit reluctant to get involved or have a look, there's a free business health check at the very beginning that you can take, an initial assessment that sort of points you in the right direction, ask some leading questions to get you thinking, “Are you doing the right thing?” And at the end of it, it will tell you how you're performing based on that information and their suggestions moving forward. So, there's a bit of a freebie at the front as well.

Me: Now, my next question would be where can our listeners find that resource online?

Dave shared that they can find that at www.thinknova.uk

Where Can We Find Alan and Dave Online

Alan Williams - Company website – www.servicebrand.global.com

LinkedIn – Alan Williams

Dave Stubberfield - LinkedIn – Dave Stubberfield

Dave’s company website – www.carter-consultancy.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Alan and Dave Uses 

Me: Now, before we close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Alan Williams: When asked about a quote or saying that they tent to revert to, Alan shared that this relates to the book, actually. So, he created this the end of last year (2023) and that is, “Content without context is toast.”

Me: I saw that in the book, I thought it was kind of cute.

So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about how that quote brings you back on track?

Alan shared that it originated really from culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's like that kind of ring and tone to it. And he was just thinking about how so much, especially with social media, it's all about pumping stuff out there. But he thinks it really helps you to recollect yourself if you remember that your particular situation is unique. And you just need to focus on that. Don't get worried with all of the possibilities of all of the content, just think about what situation you're in right now and that will help you deal with it.

Me: All right. Thank you so much, Alan. Dave, do you have one of those quotes?

Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he does, his is a bit cheesy, people might hear and go, oh, no. But his one is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” And he thinks, for him, to put that into context, again, he’s spoken that he’s solo in the business. But he thinks realizing that collaboration is king, really. So, let's take the book as an example. There would have been days, he’s sure, that he would have been not really 100%, and not firing on all cylinders. But he knew that he would have to present something to Alan later in that day to say, “This is what I've done or what I've produced.” So, that would be that factor. 

But there would also be helping Alan out. If Alan said, Ok, we've got 10 actions to do, but I'm in meetings for the rest of the week, he would go leave that with me. I'll pick that up. he'll take the strain. And he thinks that's part of that teamwork. And he thinks, again, that's part of why they work so well, because they do have the ability to understand when someone hasn't got the time or the space. The other person just seems to pick it up from somewhere. He doesn't understand how or why, it's a bit of a dark art, but it seems to be working well for them. But that for him is the one, knowing that collaborating with people is often going to be so more advantageous to absolutely everyone. That's the one for him that pulls him out of that pit sometimes where he might not be feeling great.

Me: All right, thank you so much. So, Alan's quote, “Content without context is toast.” And Dave's quote is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” Now, both quotes are phenomenal. And just to kind of piggyback on what Dave said just now, I say it all the time in customer service trainings, no man is an island, and the reason why an organization has more than one person working in it is we all have to work together. Everyone's role is important. You gentlemen wrote this book and I'm sure that it required a lot of sweat, tears, hard work, focus, just a lot of energy and engagement that you both had to put into it. And it wouldn't be the success that it is today if it is that you didn't put that effort into it. So, I fully, fully, fully endorse both the quotes that you've given to us. 

And just want to remind our listeners that customer experience is a journey, it's not something you're going to get to overnight or in an hour. It's not something that you're going to just get from one book. And it's something that we continually work to improve every single day that we get the opportunity to work on it. So, thank you so much for sharing your great insights about your book, about all the different things that you're doing in your organizations, with your own clients. It was really a great interview and I hope you had as much fun as I did.

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

Links

• The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

•  The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard

•  The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler

•  Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And Life by Spencer Johnson

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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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!

Vaishali Dialani is a multi-award-winning Customer Experience professional in the Middle East, has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader, a finalist for CX Leader of the Year 2023, and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in both 2023 and 2024. She is a firm believer in the power of knowledge sharing to foster growth and awareness within the CX community. 

With over eight years of experience as a data-savvy experienced designer, research specialists, and strategic change-maker, Vaishali passionately advocates for the integration of emotions and efficiency through customer experience research, product insights and communication. She currently serves as a Senior CX Strategist at Konabos, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation.  

Her commitment to knowledge sharing is evident through her involvement in podcasts, blogs, guest lectures, speaking engagements, and training programs. Additionally, she conducts leadership training workshops for professionals with low literacy levels, making a positive impact through collaborative efforts across diverse spheres.

Questions

· Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you are were to where you are today.

· Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.

· What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?

·How have employees across different industries adapted to the integration of technologies, specifically in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, to enhance customer service experiences? What future trends do you predict for technology's role in CX, and do you believe human interaction will remain vital in this space?

· Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

· Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

· Can you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

· What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?

· Where can listeners find you online?

· Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights 

Vaishali’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you were to where you are today.

Vaishali shared that she started her career back in 2015, right after she graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Dubai, and just like any other graduate, she was like, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I think I’ll start with marketing.”

Right quickly as she dived into marketing in the advertising world, it was chaotic, busy, a great learning curve, she learned what she liked. But most importantly, she learned what she didn't like. And that's where her analytical journey began from, she understood that it's important to know and work on your skills that you like. She paved her way to get her MBA done, and learn more about research and analytics, and then dived into a CRM officer where she picked up different aspects of what experience means, how you're helping small businesses grow, what is innovation and research, it’s a very cool experience. 

And then she moved back to Dubai where she joined her FinTech company as the head of customer engagement. Now, this was a whole new world for her while she already knew marketing and analytics, but now running campaigns and media was super interesting. And just like in any other startup, you have to wear many other hats was very interesting, because normally she would play so many different roles, she had different opportunities where you would design experiences for low income migrant workers in the UAE. 

It was almost like her postgraduate degree or a PhD, she would say, at no money, where she learned a lot of things. And that's where her curiosity for CX began, when she was designing experiences and working with the ideal. One thing paved to another and then she dived into CX, and she’s been in the industry for almost four to five years now.

Me: All right, that is a wonderful journey.

Vaishali’s Views on Customer Experience in Her Culture 

Me: Now, throughout your journey, Vaishali, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned the different industries that you've worked in, but seeing that you've been in the CX space for a while, and our show is about navigating the customer experience, maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about what your views are on customer experience. And I know you are in a different part of the world. And I know culture and behaviour varies depending on where you are. Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.

Vaishali shared that for the listeners, she comes from the Middle East from they say the light of gold, which is Dubai, and it's very interesting because it feels like you're always served in a platter. So, over the last few years, she’s been travelling a lot, and especially to the West and the East port. And she thinks there's major cultural shock that she almost have is why somebody not serving her enough. Being in Dubai hospitality is huge; services at its peak, people come for the luxury and lifestyle in Dubai. And so, she’s never had even if she goes to a restaurant, if she’s in Dubai, if she asks anyone to please can you pack this, I need a take away, they'd be like, “Yeah, sure madam”, and all of that. But when she comes to the West, they give her a box, and she’s like, “Oh, so am I supposed to pack myself?”

So many different experiences that are such culturally different, yet you're working on designing those right kind of experiences is very interesting. Being in the space that she worked across education, FinTech, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit organizations, and one thing that she finds, despite no matter where you are, in which part of the world across which culture you have been raised, is that we all are humans, and we all want to feel heard. And we want to all feel listened and feel the emotion that we're feeling whether it's with another person or a brand. So, despite many, many differences, being from the Middle East, one common thing is what kind of human experiences are we really designing?

Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Customer Experience Design and Delivery

Me: What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?

Vaishali stated that’s a difficult one. But she thinks something that's really helped her, and she truly believes in this is the power of love languages, and how you can mold that and use that in designing experiences, especially customer experiences, whether it is quality time and actually speaking to your customers, making them feel heard, and understanding where they come from, to just simple words of affirmations. And this can be digital affirmations, she’s not saying everything has to be in person, it's more about how you make someone feel like, “oh, this person hears me and understands me.” Do simple acts of service you do for them digitally, again, reward them that make them feel loyal to you. 

So, when it comes to leadership, every different project is so different from one another despite being in the CX space, because they are spread across different verticals, from governance, to analytics to design, she’s had the experience of learning that we need to understand what kind of emotions we want to create, and then create those journeys. So, for her, that's been one of the key things is, drive and understand what emotion you want to create.

AI Integration in Customer Service; Employee Adaptation, Future Trends, and the Human Touch

Me: Now, a big part of CX is technology, right? Technology is here to help us and support us in delivering a more seamless and a less friction kind of experience with customers. In your part of the world, how have you seen your employees across different industries and verticals, as you had mentioned, adapting to the technologies, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence, there is ChatGPT and different things that organizations may integrate to enhance the service experience with their customers and cut down the more route type of activities that are very mundane and monotonous, they're investing in a technology to kind of reduce. How have you seen the adoption of that take place? And if you were to be a fortune teller, if you were to look into the future, where do you see this going? And do you believe human interaction will still play a very integral role in CX?

Vaishali stated, wow, what a question. It's very interesting. So, to answer the first part of the question, which is adoption levels. She thinks adoption levels are at its peak right now. We have no option but to keep up because a lot of the CX experiences and designs that they choose to design for their customers is technology driven. You can have the best of the best designs on Figma or Canva, or Miro, but to really bring them to life, you need the right tools in place. And to be able to do that, you will be able to understand which technology or business is actually using at the moment, what kind of architecture do they have in their back end systems, and what is really possible.  

And in the ever evolving space, also, she thinks, today, all kinds of businesses, especially in the tech industry, they are coming up with niche tools and technologies across diverse industries specific to different features that allow them to give the best of the best services to their end users. But most importantly, they are very open to saying we'll integrate with another tool, whether it is in the healthcare industry, and you're looking at billing and medical insurance, they're creating their own tools to integrating with personalization tools to understanding when a patient needs to have their next checkup and reminding the patient about it to actually having analytical tool. There's so much that is happening in today's space and the adoption is at its absolute peak to keep up with the industry at the moment. That's the first part of the question.  

And then the second part of the question is, there's so much that you can do with today's technology, no matter what you do human intervention can never be impacted directly she feels, they will always coexist in her space, she doesn't think it's going to be one or the other and completely replaceable. They will always need human beings because human beings evolve. And technology is made by humans.

Me: Very true. Alright. I love that.

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

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Vaishali shared that she’s a very tech person, she loves using her app, she has apps for almost everything. But at work, she uses a lot of Canva; she’s creative as a person. So, whether it's the whiteboard or whether it's just designing something that she needs to just throw it out. She loves using Canva.

Me: Amazing. I like when I hear guests talk about using Canva. Recently, I did a presentation skills workshop for a client and they wanted to basically teach the team how to use Canva. And I remember, it was so fascinating, especially for persons who have never been exposed to the platform before, when they looked at the user interface of Canva versus a Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is just like, it's like the Apple of design. Like in terms of how easy it is, you just drag and drop it, in PowerPoint, you take three steps, in Canva, you take one. And I just I find it so amazing, it really has brought design to the average person; even if you weren't creative Canva would find some way to stimulate your creativity.

Vaishali agreed, and more than anything, even like the guided templates too, they have everything, you can just create a design system in place to be able to do anything with it. Previously, developers used to use draw.io a lot to create the map and the technology flows. And like, guys no, we need to use Canva make it more colourful. And it's so easy to use.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Vaishali

When asked about books that have had a great impact. Vaishali shared that she just finished two books recently, but they are more spiritual, but she thinks one of the books that she’s still continuing to read, and she’s amazed by it is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. That the book is taking her longer to complete in all honesty is because you really need to retrospect and think, is this the way I think. 

And it's just the way she would want to think like from growth mindset or fixed mindset and how our childhood, the way we just appreciate it really impacts on the way we work and our personality, or our character. So, there's a lot of retrospective to do. And she thinks she'll have to read the book 2, 3 times. But for now, this has been the biggest impact on the way she’s started evolving and thinking, so she'd highly recommend this book.

What Vaishali is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something she’s excited about, Vaishali stated that she'll give two things. So, the first one is she’s very excited because she’s travelling on a personal level. She’s travelling to Vancouver tonight to for her brother's graduation. And it's been a journey for their family. So, they're very, very excited for his graduation. 

And professionally, what she’s very excited about is at the moment, she’s working on three different projects across manufacturing, healthcare, and education. And the best part about all of it is, is that all of them are across different verticals of CX, and that really shows the power of a) customer experience, but b) also how vast our growing industry is. And we all have some stuff to do and make an impact across different verticals of CX, so she feels super blessed.

Me: Alright, well, congratulations to you, brother and his graduation. That's awesome.

Emerging Trends Shaping the Near Future

Me: Now, can you tell our listeners, if you were to just think about maybe two or three trends that you believe will continue to grow and emerge as we wrap up on the second and embark on the third quarter of 2024, what would you say those are just based on working with clients, in your own business, listening to podcasts, being on podcasts, writing blogs, interfacing with other CX experts across different industries. What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?

Vaishali stated, great question. And we all have been talking about this, start of the year, we were like, what’s 2024 going to hold for CX and is AI going to replace but she thinks now conversations have shifted, and everyone agrees, and a lot of the conversations she’s hearing about is, we are going to coexist together. So, that trend is kind of going to continue and only emerge, people are not going to lose their jobs because of AI, but they're just going to be supported better and to design better experience. So, that's definitely one. 

The second one is what she sees as a shift, based on discussing with clients and having these daily one on one conversations, being the centre front of the industry is that there's a grey area that was first there was digital experience and customer experience, but she sees that becoming a grey area now to becoming actually digital customer experience, and people finding out and learning more about it. And that's a very interesting space, because it makes room for everyone to grow together and learn and share experiences, which she thinks is phenomenal. So, there are no more silos within even the experience design space anymore.

And the third one she would say is, she sees extremely authenticating orthodox industries, especially such as manufacturing, or education, which had a certain way of doing certain things digitally, are now ready to evolve and embark on a transformation journey. Because they think it's extremely important to kind of keep up to the industry and the world and the customer needs. And those are massive projects that they're working on internally. So, she thinks it's very, very interesting to see that shift in the industry right now. 

Me: Alright, exciting times ahead.

Where Can We Find Vaishali Online

LinkedIn – Vaishali Dialani

X – Vaishali Dialani 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Vaishali Uses

Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert, Vaishali shared that she does. And it's one of her favourite quotes that she’s actually tattooed and it's called, “Fly with full faith.” So, it's always do your hard work and have faith in whatever you do. Because most of the times, it feels like we're doing so much and we still not able to get to the next place, we're stuck in a circle or a rod. And it's important to have faith and while you have faith, always, always do your hard work.

Me: All right, thank you so very much. So, Vaishali, I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you again, for taking time out of your busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all these great insights, especially as it relates to your culture and what's happening over there. Because the world is very small, even though we are in different continents or different places, human behaviour is still pretty much the same I believe throughout, we are through and through emotional beings. And I liked the fact that that came out in your message in terms of what we should be focused on in CX and ensuring that we're connecting with people on an emotional level, and what kind of feelings do we want them to have after they've interacted with us. So, I thought it was great that you brought that across in a message. So, thank you again.

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

Links

•     Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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 Scarperi, Bob has been a leader in professional services, SaaS, financial services, ad tech mar tech, and management consulting for 32 years. His company, Revenue Vision Partners is the industry's leading data-driven revenue growth consulting firm.

Questions

· Could you share with our listeners, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?

· You wrote a book called Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling with three other gentlemen. So, could you take a minute to kind of just go through maybe three overarching themes that the book focuses on? And just how do you believe this can really help an organization to deliver a great customer experience?

· Now, I'd like for you to share with us what's the one online tool, resource, website or application that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

· Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on your development and even your continued growth.

· Now, Bob, could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

· Where can listeners find you online?

· Now, Bob, before we wrap up, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share. I'm not sure if you have one of these but a quote that you would tend to revert to if for any reason you are faced with some form of adversity, or challenge, but that quote will help to get you refocused, get you back on track, and just help you if for any reason you got the real or you got off track.

Highlights

Bob’s Journey 

Me: Now, we always like to give our listeners an opportunity to hear from the guest, in their own words, a little bit about your journey. And it has been quite a long journey, 32 years is a good amount of time to have under your belt in all of these wonderful areas. So, could you share with our listeners, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?

Bob shared that right around the time he was finishing college, he had a really strong pull to get into sales, he was extremely lucky to have had a best friend's father was the top sales guy at Automatic Data Processing, ADP, which is sort of known to be one of the best and strongest sales driven cultures in the Fortune 100. 

And right from the very beginning, all of their structure, rigor, process, intensity really meshed with his personality and his sort of competitive nature. And so, he was lucky enough to have some early success, he’s very, very grateful for how much faith they had in him from an early age, giving him opportunities to run sales teams and move and get to experience new geographies and have really great experiences in such a phenomenally well-run company. 

And then without going into too much detail, of course, his journey took him through a number of different industries, early days of ad tech, he worked for a long time as an equity sales and trading person at AllianceBernstein. He was lucky enough also to have some leadership positions, run sales teams internationally. 

And then toward the last 10 years of his career, he had three Chief Revenue Officer roles in high growth technology companies where he really started to embrace being a leader who prided himself on installing a systematic data driven approach. 

And toward the end of that decade, he decided he really wanted to do that as a consultant for a portfolio of companies so that he could be really working through various kind of company challenges in different industries with private equity firms as their partner. So, that's what brought him to where he is now.

About Bob’s Book – Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling and Three Overarching Themes That Can Help Organizations Enhance Customer Experience

Me: Now, Bob, you wrote a book called Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling: Leveraging insights, intelligence and the power of AI to deliver efficient, durable revenue growth with three other gentlemen, Mark Petruzzi, Ray Rike and Paul Melchiorre. So, could you take a minute to kind of just go through maybe three overarching themes that the book focuses on? And just how do you believe this can really help an organization to deliver a great customer experience? And I'd love for you to maybe segment it for us, because selling covers so many different areas. If you're selling to a business versus if you're selling to a customer….an individual, so maybe you could take one of those areas and kind of just break it down for us. And just give examples of what you wrote about in the book can really help teams that are in sales because sales is critical, it's a lifeline of any business. But how can the sales team really drive a quality customer experience that can drive to a high customer retention rate, because at the end of the day, that's really what all businesses are aiming for, as you're going to be able to keep your customers for life.

Bob shared that regarding who it's written for, it would really be for anyone selling to or trying to persuade a group of decision makers, so, usually an organization where a number of people contribute to a decision that is primarily in B2B sales. But if you find yourself in a position where you are trying to convince a town council to vote your way on a specific issue that's been a problem for the community or anything else where there are a group of people who need to kind of come together to make a decision, their book will help you. 

And the way that it helps you is it lays out an approach that is not only proven by some of the most successful people in B2B sales, but it's also modern, utilizing the most high quality available B2B data. And they also talk about systems support, and AI as a tool that can help the modern salesperson navigate this very complex selling environment with multiple decisions in a tough time in the market, the macro environment is currently as complex as it's ever been. And being successful in sales at the moment is also as challenging and complex as it's ever been.

Me: So, I kind of wanted you also to maybe just go into, I would say, as I said, three overarching themes that the book focuses on. So, you mentioned AI and it's a very hot topic right across, I think, across the world, really, since it was introduced, especially since it's so accessible to everyone currently. But what does that really mean when you are selling to someone? Because at the end of the day, you're still dealing with human beings, so, what is the data really going to tell you? Or how is it going to help you to navigate that conversation? Because there has to be some human interaction, right? So, I kind of want you to walk us through that process.

Bob shared that the book talks about two different types of AI and it's really exciting because he doesn't think there is a sales book currently that, again, not only combines improving elements with AI and data approaches, but the two types of AI are generative AI, those would be systems like Chat GPT, who can help you create content in order to be compelling in a sales process.

And predictive AI, technologies like and he'll use an example, Clari, which is a tool that helps sales teams understand which of their open sales opportunities have the highest probability of closing, based on a myriad of factors. So, they do get into really solid detail and they also have contributors in the book who are experts in various topics and tell stories about how they've used these tools successfully.

Me: So, that's excellent, very good explanation on the generative and predictive AI. Because I do believe that we throw toward around so much in different industries, especially in the customer experience industry, many people believe that artificial intelligence is going to replace human beings and we're all going to be obsolete and not worth any value anymore. But I'm not there yet. And I live in Kingston, Jamaica, where we use technology here a lot, but we are not going to get to that point anytime soon, definitely not in my lifetime where you're not going to need people because we are still a society that is heavily dependent on people interaction. For example, in our banks here, and I compare it to the United States all the time. The banks are still full, 50….40 people standing in the banks. I travelled to the US quite often and I go to different financial institutions, and they are empty, there's nobody physically standing in there, there are no lines lined up outside or people lined up inside. So, just in terms of the culture and the behaviour of people just don't believe that we're going to eliminate the people component in customer experience, because people still like to deal with people, right?

Bob agreed yes, absolutely. And it's funny because he does feel like and the way that they lay it out in the book, AI can put you in a position to have more and better live human interactions with the right audience, if used properly. It doesn't replace humans; it sets humans up to be the best version of themselves and optimize their approach every day.

Me: I love it. So, it's really supposed to help us to interact better, to get to decisions faster, to understand people's behaviours quicker, to find solutions that are more need based, because a lot of times salespeople sell you stuff, they're driven by the quotas that they need to meet, they're driven by the pressures that their organizations put on them. But when you match value to the experience that the person is having and are they really getting the right solution, a lot of times down the road when there is like let's say a survey that's being done, or some form of focus group, especially if they're losing customers over a period of time, you realize that it wasn't even the right solution that was given to the client, or it wasn't being managed the proper way. And I guess, if they had the right data from day one, and it was being provided in the right way, they wouldn't have lost the customer in the first place.

Bob stated yes, he couldn't agree more.

The third theme of the book is utilizing simple data science in order to ensure that your sales approach is driven by your Ideal Customer Profile (IDP). And he'll just briefly state that as a sales leader, he had gotten frustrated by knowing that focusing on the ideal customer profile was the right thing and then defining that and making that approach data driven was impossible. It was a very distant and vague concept. But he believes that they own the very best definition now of what the ideal customer profile is and how to take that definition and identify score and rank specific prospects and clients that are the best match to that ideal customer profile and create an entire commercial approach with that as the foundation.

Me: All right, and what is the definition that you have identified in the book as your ideal customer profile?

Bob shared that it's basically utilizing firmographic traits to know what industry, what sub sector, what size of the company, how much it's growing, what web scraping tells you about a company, when you can build a model that identifies those common traits in your best customers, and utilize expert panels to ensure that the model has picked up on the right signals, that is the best way to create an ideal customer profile, and again, score and rank accounts. That's quite technical, but it's all in the book.

Me: Yes, agreed. And our listeners would have tapped into this episode, and they'd like to put their hands on your book, where can they find it?

Bob shared that the book, it's available in all the major outlets, but he will tell you, he’s a huge fan of Amazon and is readily available on Amazon in softcover, hardcover, and they'll have an audio version available within three weeks of today (May 09. 2024).

Me: Oh, okay, that was actually going to be my next question. Do you have it available on Audible?

And you better get used to this voice because it's 80% of the narration is done by him (Bob). 

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Bob shared ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo provides a backbone to a lot of the data work that they do at Revenue Vision Partners. And when they were in the marketplace to procure data assets, they did a thorough evaluation, they were convinced at the time and four plus years later, he continued to be convinced that ZoomInfo has the best B2B data available in the market.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Bob

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Bob shared that he would say that far and away, Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America’s Best Companies by Robert B. Miller and Stephen Heiman is the number one book that has contributed to the way that he has approached sales since the early 90s. He feels it lays out the most logical and powerful and consistent approach or methodology for B2B sales. 

What they tried to do with the new book is take methodologies like Strategic Selling, SPIN Selling, The Challenger Sale, and modernize the approach again with Data and Diagnosis and AI and build upon those methodologies.

What Bob is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s excited about, Bob shared that in their firm right now, they're doing one of these ideal customer profile-based data projects for a very large, diversified industrial company who services about a dozen different end markets. They're a multi-billion-dollar organization, they've run a pilot in one of their key divisions and it's been a phenomenally successful data model. 

And he’s convinced that their are hundreds of salespeople are going to utilize their time better, they're going to sell bigger and better fit accounts, they're going to be more gratified in their jobs, the company's going to gain market share in a more consistent and repeatable way. 

And it's thrilling to do that, because this was the promise that they built their company on, and this couldn't be a better group of humans to work with who he just wants to see them succeed for all the right reasons. So, he’s so excited about this journey, they're just far enough along where there's proof that it's working and there's so much ahead of them in terms of their ability to empower them to succeed.

Me: All right, I'm excited too, just hearing all of the great opportunities that lie ahead.

Bob shared that in his tennis game, he feels like his backhand is really ready for summer.

Me: Do you play competitively, or do you just play for fun?

Bob stated that he plays intermediate competitively. So, he can be pretty terrible. He has a couple of great shots and feel really good about himself, but it's a blast.

Where Can We Find Bob Online

LinkedIn – Bob Scarperi

Company LinkedIn – Revenue Vision Partners

Instagram – @bobbyscarp

Website - www.revenuevisionpartners.com

Facebook – Bob Scarperi

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Bob Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Bob shared that it's quite a long one, so, he’s not going to quote the whole thing, but unless he takes up the rest of the time, but it is, The Man in the Arena, quote by Teddy Roosevelt. 

And starting a business in one's middle age with lots of financial obligations, including three kids, two step-kids, etc…etc…has been a really bold decision and quite terrifying at times. And every time he wonders if he’s done the right thing, he grounds himself in that amazing speech and always feel like he comes back to believing that he was born to do something bold and that living through terrifying entrepreneurial moments are part of that and the victories that one is lucky enough to experience when they make that brave and bold decision are that much sweeter than then any other career related victories in his life. Of course, his highest highs have to do with his kids, but that whole man in the arena concept keeps him going every day.

“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.”

Me: So, we will have that full quote in the Show Notes of our episode, the Teddy Roosevelt quote, along with what you shared just now as it relates to kind of getting you back refocused on why you do what you do.

Bob shared that and if you saw the Tom Brady roast on Netflix, Matt Damon does a great job of narrating the entire thing.

Me: All right, Bob, thank you so much for jumping on our podcast today and sharing all these great insights as it relates to Diagnostic Selling and Data Driven Selling, as well as Artificial Intelligence and the ICP, it's all great information. I've started consuming a part of the content of the book, but I just believe I’d get so much more from the audible. So, I'm actually going to wait until it's released in the next three weeks to continue, I just believe I get so much more listening to it rather than reading it. But I would recommend for anyone that is a listener to our podcast to tap into this awesome resource that Bob and his team have so graciously given to us in the world, it's a great resource. And I believe that if we continue to try to find ways to add value to people's lives, create opportunities that you're really providing the solutions that your customers want, that will allow them to be your customer for life, through the techniques that you use to ensure that you are selling the right way, making the decisions the right way, your customer experience will take care of itself. So, thank you so much.

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

Links

•     Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling: Leveraging insights, intelligence and the power of AI to deliver efficient, durable revenue growth by Bob Scarperi

•     Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America’s Best Companies by Robert B. Miller and Stephen Heiman

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!

Rachel Stanley came to Banzai in 2019 with over 10 years of SaaS onboarding, training, implementation, consulting, e-Learning, customer success, adoption and support experience. When Rachel joined Banzai, Customer Success was the only customer-facing job function. 

Since then, Rachel has added Onboarding, Support and Customer Marketing successfully creating a Customer Experience organization that has driven best-in-industry customer satisfaction and grown Banzai’s Net Retention Rate (NRR) significantly. Rachel is passionate about building high functioning teams that consistently hit their objectives. Previously, Rachel has held roles at Amazon and ACS Technologies. Rachel lives in the Seattle area.

Questions

· Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, could you share with our listeners, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?

· Now, could you tell our listeners a little bit about Banzai and what you guys do?

· Banzai focus is really on events and your target is really your marketers are your customers. What would you say are some of your customers main pain points? How is it that you're able to overcome some of those and successfully have a high retention rate because ideally, that's what all organizations aim for, to keep the customers that they have for a lifetime.

· Now, seeing that you've been in the Customer Success space for quite some time now, what are some of the emerging trends that you are seeing in the Customer Success space that you believe if that trend continues in a positive way will help to enhance customer experience?

· Now, Rachel, can you also share with us what's the one online tool, resource, website or application that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

· Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you, and maybe even your development and just your continued growth?

· Could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that is going on in your life right now that you are really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

· Now, our listeners would have tapped into this episode, and they're quite intrigued with you, Rachel and they'd like to know how they can reach out to you online where can they find you online?

· Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests if you have a quote or a saying maybe something that you revert to or use if during times of adversity or challenge, this quote kind of helps to just get you back on track or get you back refocused. Do you have one of those?

Highlights 

Rachel’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, could you share with our listeners, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?

Rachel shared that beginning of her career, she was actually an office manager for many years and an Executive Assistant. So, her customer base was very internal. And then she took the opportunity at ACS Technologies to apply for, she was an Executive Assistant office manager and applied for a onboarding, like specialist or an onboarding role. And so, that was her introduction into customer facing. And from there, it just kind of took off. She went from onboarding to an actual, like implementation consultants, than she ended up leading that team. And so, they mainly focus on training and implementation professional services. 

And then coming into Banzai, was really when she wanted to break into customer success, it was still kind of new back then, it's really developed over the years. But at Banzai in the last five years, she’s just grown so much, thankfully, there's so many resources like this podcast out there that really explore all the areas of customer experience. So, at Banzai, like Yanique just said, it basically grew from customer success, and then added onboarding and adoption and support and customer marketing has been the latest addition.

About Rachel’s Company – Banzai

Me: Now, could you tell our listeners a little bit about Banzai and what you guys do?

Rachel shared that Banzai is a Mar Tech company. So, they're all about providing tools that give marketers data. And so, right now, their products are mostly event focused, they have a webinar platform, and then a platform/service that drives registrations to field marketing events. But they are this year is really exciting and they're looking at a bunch of different acquisitions that they’re mainly focused on how to provide data to marketers. So, they have visions of becoming a platform that has a tonne of tools for marketers to become a Banzai customer. So, for her this year, cross sell is a big focus.

Strategies for Enhancing Customer Retention in Event Marketing

Me: So, Banzai focus is really on events, as you said, and your target is really your marketers are your customers. What would you say are some of your customers main pain points? How is it that you're able to overcome some of those and as I mentioned when I was reading your bio, successfully have a high retention rate because ideally, that's what all organizations aim for, to keep the customers that they have for a lifetime.

Rachel shared that she'll specifically talk about their webinar platform customers, because that's the bulk of their business at the moment. So, the problem they often come to them, she would say most have already at least started a webinar programme, some customers are just starting but their main segment or ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is mid-market, so most of them have done a webinar programme before but it's been clunky, they feel like their other platform wasn't engaging, and they didn't know how to prove the ROI of their webinar platform. 

And so, what they really focus on is, thankfully, their platform is super easy, super clean, and all of that. So, they obviously want to make sure they use all of the features, all of the engaging features to help their audience engage more, but then they also point out all the data they have on the back end that helps them prove the ROI. And so, since their customers are marketers, they're obviously, most of their objectives are providing MQLs (Marketing Qualified Lead) and things like that. 

And so, things like their focus rate, like being able to see who was the most engaged in a webinar really can provide like a lead score for them, and then push people over to sales and provide MQLs. And so, that's really where she thinks instead of just kind of letting them just get on the webinar platform and just run a webinar, they're really focused on how to improve the webinar, how to make it more engaging, and how to deliver the data that helps them move those prospects to the next stage of the opportunity.

Emerging Trends to Enhance Customer Success

Now, seeing that you've been in the Customer Success space for quite some time now, what are some of the emerging trends that you are seeing in the Customer Success space that you believe if that trend continues in a positive way will help to enhance customer’s experience…..generally speaking?

Rachel shared that that's a great question. She thinks internally, like the trend that we're all kind of looked at and focusing on is AI. And so, how can we utilize AI? And she thinks all of us, especially people that work in customer experience, we tend to all really care about people, like we have a lot of empathy, there's definitely like a persona. 

And so, she thinks there's some concern in the AI space that like we don't want to be replaced by robots, or probably any function is worried about that. And so, she’s trying to learn as much as she can about AI and explore different tools and how it's being implemented. And what she thinks is, we really need to lean into how AI can help us be more efficient, but not replace us, like how can AI free up more of our time to focus on our customers and make sure they're getting the most value out of our product or service? 

And so, what she’s seeing right now, like with support is, AI can help find an answer quicker, or kind of write a draft of a response to a customer, instead of just like, automatically sending a response to a customer like we've all had the experience of calling in, and they're like asking you to say and it's a robot, like asking you to say what your problem is, and you end up kind of screaming at the phone asking to talk to a representative. That's not the experience she wants for their customers. 

And so, what they're leaning into is more like internal efficiencies and she thinks what that allows, it's good for morale, too, because freeing up time allows people to lean into their sweet spots and what they're passionate about, and what she’s seeing with CSM (Customer Service Management) specifically is allowing them to spend more time on things like a QBR or just checking in on a customer or joining one of their webinars, things like that. And so, she thinks that's a positive that if we can keep freeing up more time, then that's a trend she wants to continue to lean into.

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

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without, Rachel shared that Intercom for them, that's the tool they use for their Support Chat. It also allows them to do like in app pop ups, it could be anything from like a banner announcement to a survey, or announcing a feature release, things like that. It's what allows them to provide fast 24/7 support. For us a webinar, they have customers around the world, and they believe 24/7 support is essential because if something's wrong, it's super stressful in the moment, like, imagine if this podcast was live and there's a technical difficulty. So, Intercom is what allows them to do that and what allows their customer marketing to advertise things, but it's also like how they do like in app onboarding like a product tour when new customers initially joined. So, it’s an essential tool for them.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Rachel 

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Rachel shared that over like the Christmas and New Year's break, she read two books that have really kind of framed a theme for her this year. And it's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done by Kendra Adachi. And both of them aren't necessarily like business books. So, she likes books like that, that you can apply to your personal life and to work. And they kind of have a similar theme and actually though, she read The Lazy Genius Way first, and in that book, or maybe it's her podcast, but she recommended Essentialism. 

She said, she reads it reads it once a year and basically Essentialism talks all about doing less but better. And The Lazy Genius Way, her tagline is “being a genius about the things that matter, and lazy about the things that don't.”

And so, going into this year with her team, she’s just really been talking about like an essentialist mindset. And it goes back to even her original customer facing days of training where she talked a lot about first you focus on what's essential, then what's important, then what's helpful, like when training the customer, and she thinks they can apply that with their own workload, like her team's job is never done, there's always something they could be doing more and better and they get a lot thrown at them. And so, to help with overwhelm and burnout, then focus on okay, but what's essential, like what's essential today, what's essential this quarter for them to hit their objectives and their goals? And it's really been helpful for her personally, and for every member of her team.

What Rachel is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s really excited about, Rachel shared that at the risk of repeating herself, it really is essentialism, even in her personal life, she’s trying to just shed doubt, like even parenting, it's kind of like a minimalist in a way but a little bit different. So, she’s trying to simplify her life and really focus on the things that are going to make the biggest difference like personally, she’s trying to exercise more and eat less sugar like things like that that are essential.

And then at work, she’s really been focused on like picking the three things that she has to do, like the most essential things in a day and trying to let go of creating a to do list that's 20 things long and feeling like she failed when she didn't do it at the end of the day.

Me: That’s a good one.

She shared that which is definitely her old way of operating and so ending the day feeling successful is way better.

Me: I agree, especially if psychologically you've conditioned your mind that if the list is smaller and definitely you’ve done in chunks and more manageable, then it makes it more realistic and provides you with a better transition from day to day, because as you said, you don't feel like you have failed and you feel successful going into the next day.

Where Can We Find Rachel Online 

LinkedIn – Rachel Stanley

Website – www.banzai.io

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Rachel Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Rachel shared that she’s going to stick to kind of the theme of the last few questions and because she really does go back to the two quotes of the books she mentioned. Because her biggest weakness is more being a perfectionist and an overachiever. So, “Do less but better.” and basically, “Be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.” It's okay to be lazy.

Me: I love it. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for taking time and coming on our podcast and sharing all of these great insights, sharing about your company, Banzai and also about customer success, and some of the trends as it relates to AI that you believe should continue definitely to free up people's time. As well as what you're working on as you're going forward. So, we just want to extend our deepest gratitude to 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

Links

•     Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

•     The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done by Kendra Adachi

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, a nonstop optimism machine, and a widely recognized authority on business and how people navigate change. He is the author of the best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, a startup advisor, and host of the podcast Help Wanted and Problem Solvers. LinkedIn name him a “Top Voice in Entrepreneurship”. 

Jason has also had decades-long career in national media, which included working as an editor at Men’s Health, Fast Company, Maxim, and Boston magazine, and writing about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, New York Magazine, and others. 

Questions

• We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from wherever they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us?
• So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses?
• Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners.
• What are three-character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric?
• Now, could you share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Can 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? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights 

Jason’s Journey

Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from where they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us?

Jason shared that in brief, he started in media, he was a community newspaper reporter fresh out of college. Eventually, he got into magazines, he moved to New York City to work for Men's Health magazine, pretty different from Entrepreneur, and bounced around to a lot of different national magazines until he got to Entrepreneur. 

And at first, he really treated Entrepreneur like a media project. His job was to do what he had done everywhere else, which was to be an editor and to tell great stories and to think about the media brand. 

But over time, two things happen. Number one is that people because of the title, Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, they started to treat him as an authority in entrepreneurship, which frankly, he was uncomfortable with for a while because his background was in media, until he came to realize that so much of business is not about the fundamentals of business, but it's really about the fundamentals of human thinking, and logic and reinvention, and the kinds of things that he had put himself through in his own career. 

He thinks that we all have to recognize what our incredible skill is, and it's going to be different for everybody. His belief is that every human being has the same fundamental skill, and that is pattern recognition. 

The difference among us is that some of us are better at recognizing different kinds of patterns, right. And so, his pattern is how people think and how people tell stories and how people understand the world. And he came to realize that by spending an immense amount of time with entrepreneurs, he was starting to absorb their way of thinking, starting to act like that, he’s starting to launch his own businesses, starting to advise startups, and that he could lean into telling their stories, processing their insights in a way that would be incredibly useful for other entrepreneurs. And that has led him to the career that he has now.

About Jason’s Book – Build For Tomorrow

Me: So, I was lucky enough to actually read your article in Entrepreneur Magazine. I think it was the February issue that I purchased when I was travelling, how failure can feel good, and it really intrigued me. So, I reached out to you on LinkedIn, and graciously, you accepted my request and here we are today having you on our podcast. So, amazing. So, in your bio, it was also mentioned that you recently published a book that would have been September of 2022. So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses?

Jason shared that Build For Tomorrow is a book for anybody who's going through change, particularly going through any kind of career change though. 

He’s heard from a lot of readers that it applied well to personal changes as well. And the book is rooted in this philosophy that he’s developed, which is that when he meets the most successful leaders and entrepreneurs, he finds that they have all developed a unique personal relationship with change, they understand who they are in times of change, they understand how change can impact them in a positive way. And that unique relationship with change enables them to grow and build in ways that others can't. 

And he wanted to write a book that distilled the experiences and the wisdom of people who have successfully navigated change and help others with a roadmap for how to do it too. That is just simply the most important thing that any entrepreneur can do is to be adaptable, to recognize that the things that are changing around them are great opportunities, and then to understand how to systematically approach that and that's the book that he wrote. And he’s had a really tremendous feedback from it, it's really gratifying.

Navigating Change – Understanding the Four Phases

Me: Awesome! Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners.

Jason shared that he found that everybody goes through change in the same four phases listed them out panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. Let's focus on panic and wouldn’t go back. Panic, you know when you're panicked, you know when you're feeling that, you maybe are feeling that right now as he’s talking because something massive has changed in your work, because you feel like your industry is shifting underneath you. Who knows. And the reason why we panic is because decades of psychological research have confirmed what's called loss aversion theory. Loss Aversion theory is the recognition that our human brains are programmed to protect against loss more than to seek gain. 

So, when something changes in our lives and or in our work, the first thing that we do is we identify the things that we're comfortable and familiar with and then we start to think about how we're going to lose them, we're acquainting change with loss. And then we start to extrapolate it, well, because I've lost this thing, I'm going to lose that thing because I lost that thing, then I’m going to lose that other thing. Now, everything starts to feel like it's disappearing, now, we are panicking. But you can't do that forever, you can't panic forever, it's too exhausting. 

Eventually, you start to look around and say, well, what do I have to work with. We get to adaptation. We start to build a new normal, a new foundation, something comfortable and familiar, again, a new normal. And then we get to wouldn't go back, that moment where we say I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't want to go back to a time before I had it. 

And he can give examples of that. But the pattern that he’s seeing is that people are often forced into or sometimes are proactively making changes that force them to reconsider the fundamentals of the work that they do. And what they discover is that the way in which they were working before or the thing that they were doing, or the way that they were delivering value to their clients or their customers, that that wasn't the only way to do it. They thought that it was…..but it wasn't. 

And in fact, it was a lesser version of a better way to do it that had never been explored because oftentimes people don't feel incentivized to scrap something that's working, or that sort of working, and take the risk of figuring out how to build something better.

But when change comes along, when you are disrupted, when you're forced to react to the things that are shifting around you, you start to ask yourself some really fundamental questions about whether or not the things that you thought wouldn't work maybe are worth trying. And some of those are going to become the best opportunities for you going forward.

Me: All right, so change. I remember over the years, even going to university and starting my working life and starting a business, I've always heard the phrase that change is constant. And I haven't engaged in the book, I did download it on Audible, and I've started listening to it but I haven't completed it as yet. But what your four phases reminded me of was that change is constant. So, regardless of a pandemic emerging across the world, or kids coming into the play or getting new employees, like change is constant, we're constantly going through change in different aspects of our lives, so your phases definitely reminded me of that.

Jason stated that that's something that you can operationalize. 

So, the idea that change is constant is a familiar one for many people. But he thinks often you hear that and you don't know what to do with it. Okay, change is constant, so what? 

Here's the starting point. What would happen if you made decisions today based on the knowledge that the thing that you're working on now will have to change tomorrow? 

What decisions would you make when you know that? 

It starts to shift the way in which you work, you start to for example, do a thing that he calls change before you must where you start to make decisions that are hard today because they will benefit you when things change tomorrow. 

A story that he’d love to tell, he won't tell it in full here, because it takes a while but divided in the book is of a brewer, a guy who started a Beer Brewery in Delaware named Sam, his company's called Dogfish. And he had a runaway hit product in a beer called 60-minute IPA, people love this beer, it was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales of his company, and he artificially limited supply. 

So, this thing was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales at Dogfish, he capped that at 50% and that meant that people were furious at him, restaurants couldn't get his beer stocked, bars couldn't get his beer stock. And he says, “Sam, why would you do that? Why would you limit sales of your best-selling product?” And the answer that he gave me was because tastes change. And he knew that if he allowed this one beer to be a runaway hit so that everybody who ever went into a bar or a restaurant encountered just this beer of his, just this one 60-minute IPA. Well, then at some point IPAs, India Pale Ale, popular bitter style appeals is going to become less popular than it was at that one moment. 

And if people's impressions of his company were shaped by one beer by an IPA, then he was going to be known as a hot IPA brand. And that's fine until tastes change, they will change at which point he won't be a hot IPA brand, he will be an old brand, he'll be a dead brand. And so, he wanted to do something that was painful today for the benefit of tomorrow, anticipating that change will come. 

And the payoff for the story is amazing, which is that Sam limited sales of his best-selling beer when people would order it, he would try to get them to buy or stock or serve other styles of beer that he made. And as a result, he shaped perception of his company Dogfish not as a hot IPA brand, but as an innovative brand. And you know what you can do with an innovative brand is you can sell it for $300 Million Dollars, which is exactly what he did. 

That's not something you could have done if he had just thought about how to profit today, how to only succeed based on what was working today. That's what it means to build the reality of constant change into the decisions that you make today, know that they will require change tomorrow. So, how can you anticipate that and be proactive about it.

Me: Brilliant. I love that story, Jason Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing. 

Essential Character Traits for a Leader

Me: Now, Jason, as Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine, I'm sure that you interface with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business leaders across different industries across the world. And so, I wanted based on your expert opinion and your exposure to persons of this nature, what do you believe are maybe three, it's a kind of a generic question. But I like to hear from the subject matter experts, three let's say character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric, because we're all about navigating the customer experience. And the reality is, if you don't have the right people doing the things that your customers want and creating value, you're not going to have a successful business. And if your customers don't feel like they're getting value, and they choose to do business with your competition or not do business with you at all, over time you will not have a successful business. So, it's twofold and you want that person who can navigate the personalities and navigate as you said, the change and the many different things that will come forth, what would you say are three-character traits that you think someone like that would need?

Jason shared that the first thing that comes to mind was a conversation that he had with this guy Matt, who at the time was the president of Reebok, Reebok the athletic wear company. And he told him (Jason) and this was the first time he'd heard this phrase then he started hearing it everywhere, which was customer obsession. 

He said, “We're really obsessed, we're completely customer obsessed at Reebok and we want to understand them, and we don't want to understand their needs.” And he’s heard that from a lot of people, but he had never heard the next thing that he told me, which was this metaphor that he uses, he says, “Look, we are in a moment in business where quality is assumed.” 

Where if you let's say, wanted to start a scissor company making scissors, you could not advertise yourself as the sharpest scissors. Because every scissors is the sharpest scissors right? It's easy enough now to manufacture scissors that every scissors is the sharpest scissors. 

So, if you want to be successful selling scissors, you can't lean on quality alone. Quality has to be table stakes, quality is what people take for granted, it's what they expect. The next place that you need to go is who exactly are you serving? 

And how do you relate to them? 

How do you tell a story that makes them proud to use your scissors, that makes them feel like when they use their scissors, they're exploring a version of themselves. 

That's what it means to be customer obsessed is to understand the way in which your customers thinks to the degree to which you can tell your story in a way that relates directly to them. 

Now, he’s not telling you something that you don't know based on serving customers, but that scissors metaphor really stuck with him because he thinks a lot of people, their starting point is, well, because I make the best….. But if you take that away from yourself, and you say, “Being the best at whatever is not enough, because quality by itself doesn't sell, then what else am I doing here?” 

He has a friend and he’ll make this kind of point number two. Her name is Rochelle DeVos. And she is a Consumer Insights Research Specialist and is brilliant and understanding consumer psychology and has taught him a lot but the framework that she shared with him and again has really stuck with him the most is so much so that he actually has it on his desktop and he’s looking at it right now to read from Rochelle's thing. 

So, she says, “Look, if you want to understand how to relate to customers, then you need to fill out the following sentence. “When (context) I want solution so that (benefit) from the perspective of the consumer.” So, give you an example that she uses from a compression sock company, a company that makes kind of tight socks for people who have foot pain. 

So, she says alright, when context I want solutions so that benefit. When context, when my feet hurt from standing all day, it's the context in which there's a need for a solution. I want a solution. I want to feel comfortable while still looking cute. 

Her example is a company that makes compression socks for women. So, that's something that they are concerned about. 

So, that benefit, so that I can do my job, be present for my family, enjoy my life while not standing out because of my foot pain. 

What's so important about understanding this when context I want solutions so that benefit is that most entrepreneurs get stuck at solution. 

They talk about the solution that they have, I've made compression socks, I've made compression socks for when your feet hurt. 

But the real conversion, the real connection to the audience comes at the benefit. It comes at being able to articulate the value that your customer is going to get from using your solution. 

Customers don't care about solutions, nobody wakes up in the morning and they're like, I want compression socks. What they think is I want to do my job and be present for my family and enjoy my life. That's what they want. So, how do you understand the benefits that they want enough that you can have a conversation with them that is benefit oriented, because that is where you win. 

And Rochelle suggests the way to do this is, is to be constantly in touch with and survey your consumer so that you understand how they think and how they talk and the language that they use. And he finds that perspective to be incredibly powerful. 

So, if we're making a list here so that you know number one he thinks is to be customer obsessed to the point where you recognize the quality itself is not going to connect to your customer. 

Point number two is to be benefit oriented, to understand your consumer at a level that is deep enough that they will, that they can articulate the benefit of that consumer is seeking. 

And if he had to come up with a third one, qualities of leaders who are customer centric.

He’d say that there is a level of inefficiency that leaders are willing to tolerate, to learn from their customers. 

A conversation that always stuck with me is a woman who had started, he can't remember the name of the company, but it was a paint company, she makes like, really cool paint colors, and it had been quite successful. And the company has grown, it's actually been acquired, she's still running it. 

She has a large team, she still is in her brand's Instagram DM’S every day, corresponding with customers, if somebody DM’S that brand on Instagram, the CEO responds, and that is deeply inefficient. 

But it has helped her stay in touch with her consumer in a way that she feels she would lose if she retracted from that and she just focused on all the operations of the business. 

She wants to be in touch in a way that is inefficient. She has a tolerance for inefficiency, because that is the thing that is ultimately enabling her to understand her customers’ needs today and where those shifts are tomorrow.

Me: Wow, that's amazing, a CEO that's in the DM’S. That's brilliant.

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

When asked about online resource that can’t live without in his business, Jason shared that these days, he has been absolutely loving Fathom. So, you can get at www.fathom.video and Fathom is a AI note taking tool. 

He has it in all of his calls and meetings now. And it just does a great job of contextually summarizing what was said, provides a transcript, it's not a perfect transcript, but it's close enough so that you can go back and find what somebody said, and then it's very searchable. 

So, he found that to be an excellent way of passively collecting all the information that is being shared and discussed so that he has now a kind of catalogue of it and an easy way to go back and find it. He strongly suggests just having something like this running in the background of all your meetings now. So, again, it's just www.fathom.video is the company's website.

What Jason is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something he’s excited about, Jason shared that he’s been working on a newsletter for the last year, it's called One Thing Better. And the tagline that he has for it is, “One way each week. One way to be more successful and satisfied at work and build a career or company that you love.” 

And each week is him sharing a strategy. Usually it's a story that articulates it, and then an exercise that people can use to think more adaptively, to be more open minded, to find opportunities in places you're not looking, to just feel better about work. 

His wife refers to this newsletter as work therapy. And he’s been just incredibly gratified by the response that he’s getting to this newsletter, it pretty quickly grew to 50,000 subscribers. 

And he just gets these emails from people telling him that they print out his emails, and they keep them on their desk to read regularly, or they forward it to their friends who are struggling with something. 

And he’s so excited to have created something that can have that kind of personal connection. If you want to check it out, it's www.onethingbetter.email, that's the web address. And he just thinks there's a lot of potential in exploring the newsletter space and in creating things that are both connecting with people on a business but personal level as well. That's a space he really like to live in. So, he’s been excited to be building that and to see where it goes. 

Me: So, we'll definitely have the link to the newsletter in the show notes of this episode. And I imagine once they subscribe, they can have access to previous newsletters that were published, correct?

Yes, as soon as you visit the website, you will see the back catalogue.

Where Can We Find Jason Online

Newsletter – www.onethingbetter.email 

LinkedIn – Jason Feifer

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Jason shared that he’s not big on motivational quotes, he doesn't get driven that way. But he’s had a lot of people say really impressive things to him that stick with him. 

One of them came from Malcolm Gladwell, who is a best-selling author and podcaster, and so on. And they were talking about work and so on and he had said this line to him which he loved, which was, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.” 

The idea being that if you have too narrow vision of yourself, then you will limit all the opportunities that could come your way, that don't fit that narrow definition of self. So, self-conceptions are powerfully limiting and that is something he thinks about a lot as he pursues things that takes him out of his earlier conceptions of himself.

Me: Thank you so much for sharing. All right, Jason, we will just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today, talking about your best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, and the four phases that are connected to that book, also giving us three of the strong character traits that you believe will help leaders to really build an organization that will not just provide value for their customers, but also for their employees so it can be a win-win on both ends. And the insights, the knowledge, the experiences that you’ve shared with us today, the stories, they were just extremely insightful. And I just want to say thank you so much.

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

Links

• Build For Tomorrow by Jason Feifer

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!

Steve Cockram is an inspirational communicator, serial entrepreneur, confidant to elite leaders around the world and co-creator of the world's premier “Leadership Toolkit”.

He has co-authored The 100X Leader, 5 Voices and The 5 Gears with his business partner, Jeremie Kubicek. Their new book, The Communication Code, released in November of 2023.  

Questions

·      So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today?

·      Your book, The Communication Code, you wrote it with your business partner, Jeremie Kubicek, could you share with us a little bit about that book, maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book focuses on? And kind of who is the book geared towards?

·      Now, you mentioned the five C's in terms of communication code, if I wanted to know or one of our listeners wanted to know what's my primary communication code? How do I know? Is there like a test that you can do? 

·      What do you think is critical in customer experience? If we were to look at the different code, channels that you spoke to us about the five C's, do you think they're all critical? Or do you think there may be one or two that definitely must occur in that interaction?

·  When you're explaining to me the five C's just now and you said in terms of communicating, you have to be really good at asking questions. How can you improve on the ability or the competence of asking the right types of questions? Because that's critical to the whole communication process, if you're not asking the right questions, then you're not going to get the right responses to get to the solution.

·    Now, Steve, could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business?

·     Now, could you share with our listeners as well, Steve, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, Steve, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Steve’s Journey

Me: So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today?

Steve shared what an interesting question that is, nobody ever in their right mind have done all the things he’s done in the last 30 years. So, he'll give the highlights. He was a school teacher, an entrepreneur, a nightclub owner, a pastor, a coach, consultant, and been running Giant really with Jeremie for the last 11 years. So, he always say if you were to meet his friends at the age of 30, and ask who would be the least likely guru on relational intelligence? Probably, he would be in everyone's top three. 

So, everything they've learned usually has come out of their own personal failure and trying to work out why human beings behave the way they do. And also, how can they help people do relationships better in every area of their life? That's really been the heart and the joy of the last few years.

About Steve’s Book – The Communication Code

Me: So, your new book that was mentioned in reading your bio, The Communication Code, you wrote it with your business partner, Jeremie Kubicek, could you share with us a little bit about that book, maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book focuses on? And kind of who is the book geared towards?

Steve shared that they kind of say the book is for anyone who is involved in any form of human interaction relationship, i.e., everyone. They write for leaders really, but he honestly believe all the resources they created, this is probably the one that leaders apply most in their home relationships as much as they do anywhere else. 

So, the premise gives you a couple of things. One is that transmission of information is not the same as effective communication. So, just because you've sent information to someone does not mean that they've understood the intent with which you've sent it or your expectations as to how you would wish them to respond. So, they use the analogy of saying, if you think of a communication code for those sort of like the enigma machine or a codebreaker, if I could send to you a communication code in advance of the transmission of information, which shared with you how I would like you to respond, we are more likely to meet each other in the middle and communicate effectively. 

So, the basic premise is there are five communication codes, each come with clues. If he said to Yanique, “I'm going to send this to you, I want you to critique it, I want you to tell me why it's not going to work, you won't hurt my feelings. It goes live in two hours. If there's mistakes, I want to know, full critique invited.”  

Second one is Collaboration, where basically he says, “Yanique, I've been working on something, I think it's pretty good, but I think you can bring things that will make it better.” So, full collaboration, please help make this better, whatever that is. 

Clarify, if he says to you, “Yanique, you know I've got something really important to share, I don't think it's going to come out perfectly first time. Would you ask great questions, don't try and critique or collaborate too soon. Help me get out what I'm really trying to say.”  

Because clarification is usually the ability to ask questions before you launch into something else.  

Care is the fourth communication code, which says, this is what I got wrong many, many times where just because someone is transmitting information to him, doesn't mean they want him to fix them, solve them or be their consultant. Care means, “Steve, I am struggling right now, what I'm going to say to you probably bears no resemblance to what the real issues are. I just need to know that somebody cares enough about me to be present, to listen, not trying to solve me, not trying to fix me.” 

Then the last one was celebrate, which is, he might say, “Yanique, hey, before we go on, this is really important to me, I'd love us to take a moment to celebrate something really special, not move on too quickly and go.” 

So, the idea being is you'd be amazed if you add five communication codes that you send in advance of the transmission of your information, you will find that basically, relationships that you struggle with at work, with the people you lead, even the people you have at home, you will be amazed what happens when you actually give them clues as to how you want to respond. 

So, there you go, that's the quickest overview he’s ever given of the communication code book, so apologies if that was longer than you were hoping, but he hopes it at least wet your appetite.

Me: It did. So, just run back through the five C's for me. You said Critique, Collaboration, and what was the third one?

Steve shared, Clarify, Care and Celebrate.  

So, what happens is that all of us have default communication codes that are wired into our personality. So, when he doesn't think about it, he automatically tries and collaborate but it's experiences critique. His wife, for her care is number one, and clarify is number two. So, when people present to him things that they're struggling with, unless he’s intentional, he will usually try and solve their problems.  

And it's amazing how often that goes wrong because he’s not actually able to meet the expectations, unspoken by the way of the person on the other side of him and just for every leader, every day when you're managing people in different contexts will almost always end up with miscommunication, this is just simple. Children can learn it and understand it, they use it at home the whole time. And it's been transformative, so that's why they share it.

Understanding Your Primary Communication Code

Me: Now, you mentioned the five C's in terms of communication code, if someone wanted to know what was their primary code, right, because you said your primary one is collaboration, but it's received as critique. And your wife’s care and clarify. So, if I wanted to know or one of our listeners wanted to know what's my primary communication code? How do I know? Is there like a test that you can do?

Steve shared that there is, if you go to www.giantworldwide.com, there's a free assessment there. Or it might be actually www.giantos.com. 

So, there's a free assessment. But it's really interesting when actually you begin to think about the transmissions of the miscommunication. So, a lot of people either think by sending an email they've communicated effectively, and the reality is, the moment you grasp as a leader that transmission is not the same as effective communication, you also begin to think, how could I use this, now he'll even use it with people who haven't learned the communication code. He'll say to them, “Hey, before I respond to you this moment, you've asked me for this. Can I just be clear, what do you hope happens here? Are you asking me just to listen and be a good friend or a good boss? Are you asking me to celebrate with you? Do you want to ask good questions, you asked me to help make it better? Or do you want me to tell you why I think it will or won't work?” 

So, if you think about it, you can become intentional immediately and amazingly when people believe that you are more relationally intelligent as a leader, you'll be amazed at how much your influence grows with the teams and the people you lead every day. It's amazing what people do when they feel that they're being listened to, heard and that you're committed to trying to really hear what they're trying to say, rather than what he guesses he used to do, which was just respond with whatever he thought was most appropriate in the moment, or whatever pressure he was dealing with.

The Importance of the Five C’s in Customer Experience

Me: Now, a big part of communication, Steve, and I'm kind of bringing this back to customer experience, right? Typically, a customer will reach out to an organization for primarily two reasons, to make a request, it could be for an existing service that they have with your company or product, or it could be for a new service that they’re seeking to attain. Or they're calling because they have a problem and they would like it resolved. So, primarily those are like the two channels that customers will reach out to you for. What do you think is critical in customer experience? If we were to look at the different code, channels that you spoke to us about the five C's, do you think they're all critical? Or do you think there may be one or two that definitely must occur in that interaction?

Steve shared that it's a really good question. His instinct in EQ is to say that clarify is probably the place to start. Because in a sense, the clarification is what are they really wanting to happen? What are they really hoping happens? And he guess asking the right questions in the beginning, for those of us who are problem solvers, we tend to launch into problem solving quickly. 

And he would say that really understanding, well, is somebody just wanting a rant, does somebody just want to have their pound of flesh and get that off there and he just needs to sit there and care and not try and solve it. Or do they have a specific problem that they really hope he can help them with? 

He thinks it's unlikely that celebrate is going to be the agenda, but it would be nice if they were ringing up to say how amazing they think your product is. But he would say probably the clarify is where you start and making a judgement of whether what this person really wants is just you to listen, or whether they're actually more likely inviting you beyond the initial clarification into a collaborative process, how do I help bring a resolution to the reason that you are contacting customer service? 

Now, he thinks the other one, he doesn't know what it's like in your part of the world, but you'd be amazed how many people will spend an awful long time waiting to get through to a customer service line. So, he thinks sometimes the disarming connection, the saying, “I'm so sorry. I'm aware you've had to wait a long time, I would love to be able to do everything I can to help you resolve whatever the issues are.” He always think that goes a long way with him when someone at least recognizes that he’s probably been on the call longer than he was hoping he would be.

Improve on the Competence of Asking the Right Questions

Me: Agreed. So, I'm happy you said clarify, because the question I really wanted to ask you, but I kind of wanted to hear what you would have said based on the customer experience approach is. When you're explaining to me the five C's just now and you said in terms of communicating, you have to be really good at asking questions. And it has been my experience as a customer service trainer and even as a podcaster, I must say I've gotten much better at doing it over the years, but I find a lot of people who are in customer service practitioner roles struggle with this, like how can you improve on the ability or the competence of asking the right types of questions? Because that's critical to the whole communication process, if you're not asking the right questions, then you're not going to get the right responses to get to the solution.

Steve shared that he thinks you actually master your content and the products of which you are going to be answering people's questions. There's a competency filter which means, “Do you know how to help somebody in that process?” 

And he thinks it's different again, whether you're doing it online, or telephone or whether you're maybe in a physical place, like if he goes to the Apple store, the geeks helped him, there's different things he would say depending on whether it's face to face or whether more likely it's even just over a phone because he thinks you have to remember is that communication, only 10% of communication is the words that are used, 35% is the tone with which the words are offered. And then 55% is the nonverbal communication body language. 

So, you're delivering customer service and all you have his tone of voice and words, you're already having to work hard to really understand what is it this person is seeking to communicate. 

So, for him, he thinks that communication part is potentially really helpful, because it's almost taking the time to clarify and ask the question to really make sure you understand what the intent and the expectation. 

So, there's the two things that he’s always trying to understand when someone's speaking to him, what is their intent really? And what is their expectation of this engagement? Even if he knows they probably won't tell him, or they may be unaware of even knowing what it is in the first place is the reason communication is so difficult to train. 

But it's also how people have tools, it becomes really significant when people are able to begin to decode what is the intent, what is the expectation, in his world, obviously, you alluded to something called five voices, he spent about the last 20-25 years trying to work out why humans behave the way they do and understanding that different personalities react very predictably to different interactions. Now, that's probably a high level of sales skills and customer service is a degree of sales if you think about it.

But actually, there's another piece that if people want to add skills, begin to listen to the words that people use, whether that's in the way that neuro linguistic programme would, programming would start to think about, do they talk about what they see, what they hear? Or are they more kinesthetic and in our language of voices, he’s listening for what type of personality is presenting themselves to him in the way that they engage, in the way they communicate. 

So, he would argue that in any human interaction, the person communicating, transmitting to you is giving you lots of clues. 

The question is, to your point, how much time do we really spend listening and trying to understand, discern who this person is, what their intent, what are the expectations before we launch into probably what they were expecting, which is a more collaborative approach to how do we help resolve their issue, bearing in mind that the presenting issue may not be the real issue.

There's so much in there, here's the thing he'll encourage to anyone who's really interested in developing their skills in this area, he’s your kind of Beacon of Hope, because he’s like 24 years on now into this as one of the least relation intelligent people by nature, sadly, by personality. And actually, now many would say, I think really hard about it because I’ve really had to learn, the things that don't come naturally to you, you often end up being a better teacher and coach, because you've actually had to wrestle and struggle with your own inability at my time to listen. 

They have a tool in their toolbox called the boomerang effect, learn to be interested before trying to be interesting. It's like relational intelligence 101. And he thinks it's amazing how often people want to talk to you about them and whatever you say, it reminds them of them or where they've been, that's another area that he’s not sure where the customer experience particularly, but as a communication tip, it's amazing what happens when you meet people are interested in you, more than trying telling you how interesting they are.

Me: Yeah. Well, it's funny, you said that, because one of my very favorite books, and I try to read it at least once per year is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And he talks about that in his book and I mean that book was published from 1933. So, it's amazing that that fundamentally is still the case today, because we are true and true human beings and as you mentioned before, some traits are just predictable.

Steve agreed that they are, and he think that's the bit which human behaviour is more predictable than any of us would ever give it credit for. And he thinks that's the bit where, he doesn't know whether you've watched the film called The Matrix. The moment you begin to understand why human beings behave the way they do, it's a little bit like the green letters and numbers coming down the screen, and you begin to watch a human interaction in different dynamics, in different ways, and you suddenly began to realize, actually is it's more predictable, and therefore if it's predictable, it can be learned. 

And that actually, without it being manipulative, we can actually really work on being far more relationally intelligent and that will help us in every aspect of our leadership, whether we're working with our teams, or whether we're working at home, or whether we're ourselves engaging with clients and customers. But fundamentally, he would argue now that relational intelligence is now become even more important than classic IQ. AI does so much now. I don't know how much you play with it, but in our world is ridiculous how intelligent AI is becoming. But the one thing it doesn't do well, it doesn't do the relational intelligence piece as well as human beings do. 

And he’s not convinced that it will ever replace it. All he knows is it's becoming, he often says that basically, the ability to establish, maintain and develop long term relationships inside and outside your organization is the primary currency of wealth and influence in the new world.

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Steve shared that the differences in the geeks who run his business are, he tries to think what for him, he thinks 1Password as a middle aged man is the app that he loves the most he looked in before, and he has 376 logins and very secure pieces of data in one app, which basically means I doesn't have to try and have 357 passwords identical. So, 1Password is the best. He doesn't know what it is USD $3.99 a month. But actually, that makes him feel more secure and safe online, that's him personally. 

The business, he thinks if you were to speak to their team at the moment, they're building an app, they use a software called Framer, but it's a way in which you can see what technology in the app will be and do and look like before you actually have to actually engage in building the coding. So, he’s a massive fan of Framer, even though he’s not the person who actually runs it. There's some far younger, clever UI, UX developers who do all that work. But fundamentally, he’s always massively impressive with what Framer does.

What Steve is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s excited about, Steve stated that that’s a great question. Well, he thinks he probably alluded to it in the sense that they have worked for years to try and codify tools to help leaders do a better job in the visual world we live in. What they're working on at the moment and this is the thing which he smiles as he says it. They've run a B2B business up until this point, they've licensed kind of coaches and consultants to use their stuff. 

But they're building a B2C app at the moment, which will take all of the Jedi mind tricks of the last 20 years about why people behave the way they do. They'll take the best of their tools, the best of what AI is able to do, and they will create a five voices out which will come your way later this year, which basically is your personalized coach in relation to, it will know your personality and your wiring. And it will basically customize content and learning for you and allow you to access it in the way that you most love to learn. 

So, if you want podcasts, ebooks, audiobooks, but the idea really of actually rather than having to read one book, and we all read the same thing. He’s watching the ability to customize content in form and style that is unique to you as an individual. And he’s never seen that before. 

So, he thinks communication code will be the last book they write in the late industrial format of a published book. He thinks they will customize content for individuals in formats and voices even and length of time, you'll be able to have your daily version of encouragement that will come straight to you when it comes, so that's what the team is working on at the moment. He gets to see all the progress week by week and minimum viable products is going to be ready for mid-May. So, watch this space for personality driven grows customized to you.

Where Can We Find Steve Online

LinkedIn – Steve Cockram

Email – [email protected]

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Steve Uses

When asked about quote that he tends to revert to, Steve shared that he’s got plenty of those. But probably the most common one is the Theodore Roosevelt quote when he talks about, “If he's going to fail, he would rather fail while daring greatly than be counted among those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” So, that's what he goes back to and just go, “If I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail while daring greatly, going after something big enough, that actually could make a dent and for good in the world.”

Me: Fantastic. So, we will have definitely have that quote in the show notes of this episode. So, just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, Steve, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast and sharing about your book, The Communication Code, the five C's that you mentioned, how it works, the inner workings of why it's important to listen, asking the right questions, understanding that relational communication is definitely the epitome of where we're moving forward to in this world. And just how as human beings, we can utilize a lot of the cues and clues that are given to us to improve on how it is that we transmit the communication with each other. So, it was really insightful, and I just want to say thank you so much.

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

Links

•     The 100X Leader: How to Become Someone Worth Following by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     The 5 Voices: How to Communicate Effectively without Everyone You Lead by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

•     The Communication Code by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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! 

Darby Vannier, with over 20 years of experience, is a seasoned leader adept at building and growing organizations. As President & CEO of Indispensable Leadership Group, he excels as an executive coach, consultant, speaker, and fractional COO, focusing on strategic and leadership development. He has led effective teams of more than a 100 employees, coached others into their own leadership positions, and created stability during challenging organizational transitions. Darby built his career on the philosophy that developing the right people is the key to success. 

Learn more at www.beindispensable.com.

Questions

·      Even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you are to where you are today.

·      Your book titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? What was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together?

·      Which role do you think is more effective, the manager’s role or the leader’s role?

·     Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. Explained to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader.

·      In the book, you also mentioned the whole conscious competence model. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept.

·      Could you also share with our listeners, what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

·    Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it had a great impact on you.

·      Can you also share with us what's the one thing in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, and the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

Highlights

Darby’s Journey

Me: Now Darby, even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today.

Darby shared that it’s kind of a diverse career actually. So, he started off in retail, actually kind of in the entertainment industry, working as a manager at a 22-screen movie theatre, which is an interesting industry, especially back at that time when it was before digital movies and everything, and everything came in on natural celluloid film and everything. 

So, yeah, 22 screen movie theatre, they would serve 1000’s of people a day and that was an interesting experience getting started because it definitely was jumping right into that retail type environment, bringing in at that point, you're talking about most of their employees were high school or college aged students and, and so that's just a different level of team member that you're managing. 

From there, he kind of jumped even further into retail, he actually became a store manager for Kinkos at the time, so the print shop at Kinkos, which is now FedEx Office, but at the time, it was still Kinkos. And at that time, all the Kinkos were 24-hour stores, like they never closed, didn't close on any holidays, didn't close any hours, nothing. So, that was definitely a learning experience he will say, managing a 24 hour a day business from that standpoint. 

And he did that about 6 years and then moved into the non-profit world where he took over as CEO of an International Livestock Association, actually for alpacas of all things. And it's always an interesting story because he tells people when he got the interview for the job, he had to look up what an alpaca was because he had a general idea that it was like a llama, but he didn't exactly know what it was, so kind of entered into a whole new realm there. And he did that for about 11 years where he reported directly to a board, grew that organization, fixed a lot of things in that organization, and then grew that organization. And then they actually went through a merger process and merged with another national organization. And he took over as CEO of the newly created merged organization for that industry. 

And then from there, he decided, he’s kind of ready to be done with this non-profit thing, and he exited non-profit, went back into the for-profit world, joined a company that does leadership development, strategic planning, executive coaching, that sort of thing, because he’s always been passionate about leadership, and did that for about 7 years. 

And then last year decided he’s going to break off and do his own things. He had a company established previously for some consulting and stuff that he had done and he just expanded that and started offering fractional leadership services and executive coaching on his own and have built that up from there. So, still working on that and that's kind of gets us up to date.

About Darby’s Book – The Indispensable Leader

Me: Now, as part of this journey, you are also an author and your book is titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book, I do have some questions I want to ask specifically, but I kind of just want to hear in your own words, like what was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together?

Darby shared that the book is really geared towards anybody, he wouldn't even say young leaders, he would say anybody who's really either starting out in leadership, leading other people or even if they have been leading people and they just want to have some experience and some knowledge to refine maybe their leadership style. 

And it's kind of one of those things, he’s kind of kept stories over the years throughout his career, because he’s sure you have experienced throughout your career, you encounter interesting things, he'll just put it that way, some challenging things and some difficult things, and then some really exciting things. 

So, he had lots of things that he has accumulated throughout his career that he felt like these were good learning experiences for him at the time, and had he had this information when he was starting out being a leader, it would have been highly beneficial. 

So, in the midst of COVID, back in 2020, when everything kind of shut down, and we all had more time, because we were staying home and everything, he decided that seems like a good time to start writing a book. So, that's when he started on the book. 

And the book really kind of goes down the path of taking this idea, he started off the book by basically saying, you hear people say this question….”Are you a manager? Or Are you a leader?” 

And he really attacks that and he say, we're really looking at that wrong, because he thinks that's the wrong question. It assumes that people who would probably consider themselves managers of things, cannot be good leaders and that's not the case. He knew a fair number of people who definitely consider themselves managers, who are really spectacular leaders as well. 

So, he kind of asked people to look at it a little bit differently and what he thinks people mean is actually more of are you more manager oriented? Or are you more visionary and entrepreneurial oriented?  

And if you think about that as a spectrum, everybody exists somewhere on that spectrum. And you don't want to be at the far end of either end of that because you don't want to be too high visionary, that you just come up with a lot of ideas and nothing gets done. But you don't want to be too far managerial where you only care about checking off your list, and you don't really care why you're doing it. 

So, what he basically asked people to do is think about this more like a Venn diagram, where you have two intersecting circles and let's take the best traits of both manager and visionary archetypes, and create the best possible leader that you can be because there's only a certain amount of things that you have access to yourself, there's only a certain amount of things that you can gain yourself. 

So, let's find those best things and then let's try to release the bad things so the bad traits of those archetypes so that we don't fall into those ruts as well. And he kind of goes down that journey and he uses a lot of stories from his career to illustrate various points on leadership and talking about mentorship and some of those things as well so that people can gain that knowledge that he didn't necessarily have at the time as he was going through it.

The Effectiveness of the Manager’s Role and the Leader’s Role

Me: So, I like the fact that you spoke about, are you a leader or a manager, but even outside of that you talk about in the book, just visionary leaders and I'm not sure what was the other term that you had outside of visionary? Managers.

So, can you just differentiate, I know you said, we look on it from a different perspective. But if we were to put it in terms of hierarchy, or better yet, in terms of in an organization, if you really want to motivate people, get them to do what you want them to do without having to literally stand up over them with a stick over their head saying, “If you don't do this, this is the sanction that's going to be enforced.” Which role do you think is more effective, the manager’s role or the leader’s role?

Darby shared that he would actually say both are important and it's good to have a mix of both types of individuals within an organization. 

Here's the reason why. So, people with managerial characteristics who fall more on that side of the spectrum are people who are very process oriented, they're usually very organized, they're the ones who are able to look at something and say, here's how it's going to get done. They can outline the 50 steps it's going to take to get there. They're about creating a list and checking off the things and getting stuff done. They're the ones that are talking about, what are we going to do? And how are we going to do it? 

And sometimes they don't always care about the why they should and that's what he means by making sure that they try to pull in the best traits of both worlds. But those are the folks who are going to get stuff done for you. And they are the folks who can execute on a vision. So, basically, they can take a vision of a founder or a visionary and they can translate that vision into the action steps that it's going to take to accomplish it. 

So, on the visionary side, you have to have visionaries as well, because the high visionary people, those are the folks who are generating lots of ideas, they're coming up with five or ten new ideas every day, they're usually very passionate about their ideas. 

Oftentimes entrepreneurs are visionaries, because that is the type of individuals who are drawn to starting a business and taking that risk and everything. Because in their minds, when they think of an idea, when they envision something, it's done like we're there, and it is done. They're the ones that are more going to be talking about why are we doing something, like they want to be able to explain and show their passion for why is it that we want to accomplish whatever it is that they've come up with. 

The difficulty you can run into with a visionary though is, is that they tend to move on very quickly, because if you get a very high visionary person, they only love generating new ideas, they don't want to talk about how to get there, they just want it done. 

So, that visionary needs to have people who are more managerial in nature so that they can actually get stuff done. And in most companies, you almost have to have two top individuals who are one is one and one is the other. 

That's why you often see a CEO whose high visionary and you see a COO who is the person who executes and those two individuals have to have a high amount of trust, because they will piss each other off and that's the bottom line. 

Because what will happen is, is that COO who's more process oriented, who's the one going, “Okay, there's these 50 problems we have to solve before we can get there” they are going to be like saying slow down and pump the brakes, we got to back up here. 

And the high visionary CEO is the one saying, “No, we got to move forward. And I want to do all these things, and everything.” 

So, in order for their company to be highly successful, you almost have to have that mix. You see this with celebrity leaders he'll call him. So, people like Steve Jobs, for example, it's well known that he was very high visionary, brilliant guy, came up with amazing things, had very high expectations, very passionate about his industry. 

But he learned very early on, he basically lost his company initially, before he came back many years later, he learned very early on that he needed to have people that could execute those ideas, because he just wanted to spend time on generating ideas, he needed an execution team as well. 

So, eventually, he figured out he had to have individuals who worked with him that he trusted, that could execute those ideas that could challenge him and slow him down, he would on the opposite side of that push them forward. So, it's this weird balancing act. So, every company needs to have a good mix of both in order to be successful.

The Art of Being Curious as a Leader

Me: Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. And curiosity sometimes I think can be misinterpreted, sometimes, for example, people will think that curiosity I find is being inquisitive, it's a similar adjective but inquisitive for some reason connotates, almost you being concerned or asking questions about things that should not concern you. But I do believe that that's how we learn right? About asking questions, exploring, experiencing. Explaine to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader.

Darby shared that it certainly can mean inquisitive and that is something that it can mean. But when he talks about being curious and when he coaches leaders and encourage them to be curious, what he’s really trying to do is encourage folks to be lifelong learners, like he wants you to be curious about new things, go read books, go meet new people, go join a group that you wouldn't necessarily join because by gaining those additional experiences, and that additional knowledge, you're only going to grow as a leader. So, he’s very big on making sure that folks that he coaches and himself, do not get stagnant. 

And what that means is you have to be engaged, you have to be engaged in what you do. You have to be engaged in your industry, you have to be engaged in life. So, sometimes it's professional development, and you're joining an association or you're reading a book or whatever. 

Sometimes it might be personal development where you're learning a new language or travelling to a country that you've never been to so that you can gain that experience because all of those things are important. They are going to make you a much, much better well-rounded leader, especially as he speaks to college students every now and then. 

And as he speaks to college students, that's one thing that he talked to them about is gain a broad set of experiences because a lot of us really end up, in the United States, a lot of folks who go to college end up going to college nearby home, so, they're exposed to, yes, a new set of people, but it may be very similar to what they're used to. So, he encourages people to get out of your comfort zone and go do some other things because the more experiences you have, the better leader you're going to be. 

Certainly, looking back at his career, he’s sure as you look at your career, every single thing that he dealt with and went through, all of that past history really made him into the leader that he is today. And everything that he’s doing today will make him into the leader that he is in five years, that's the bottom line. 

So, you got to have that curiosity, if you don't, you're going to end up stagnant, you're not going to really grow as a leader, you're probably not getting promoted up very much. In most industries, you really do need to be curious so that you can continue to expand as well.

Me: Yes, I totally agree that you should definitely be open to learning and from everything that you do, it definitely adds to who you are today, as you said, what you're doing now is building for where you're going be five years from now.

Conscious Competence Model and the Four Phases

Me: In the book, you also mentioned Darby, and I was exposed to this many years ago when I had done a leadership course myself, the whole Conscious Competence Model. And I liked the example that you gave with the baby. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept.

Darby shared that this is something that really helps in coaching as well, because it's something that everybody goes through, but they don't really pinpoint that they're actually going through it. 

So, the idea here is there's four phases of competence. And you really start off no matter what it is, in some new experience, in some new activity, you start a new job, you learn how to drive, whatever it is, you start off this idea as being unconsciously incompetent, which means you're incompetent at whatever you're doing, and you don't even know you're incompetent at it. And that's a big problem because then you're doing things and you don't even know you're doing them wrong. 

So, the idea is, hopefully somebody will point out to you or you'll eventually move into the idea of conscious incompetence. And that's really where you're still incompetent at it, but you recognize that you're incompetent at it. So, you know, you're doing it wrong, it's kind of a situation, you know that you don't know something. 

And then after that, the idea is that you move into conscious competence, which means that you're competent at it, but you have to think about it all the time, it's not become a habit, like you have to actually think about whatever the activity is. So, if you think about when you're learning to drive, this is a good thing. Or this is a thing we encounter, you have to constantly think about turning your turn signal on or stopping at the stop sign or stopping at the light or seeing the light turn yellow, or whatever that is, you are at that point consciously competent. So, you can do it, but you got to think about it all the time. 

The last phase is really where you want to get to, especially with regard to leading people, you want to get to unconscious competence, where it is that you are competent at something and you don't have to constantly think about it, it just happens. So, this basically is the idea of it becomes habit. 

There's actually an author named Charles Duhigg, he wrote a book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, it's a spectacular book, but he talks about habit loops where your brain is set up so that it creates these habit loops out of things that you do regularly. And that's how you end up, if you've ever driven a car, and then you're driving along, and sometimes you're like, I don't remember the last five minutes, and it kind of freaks you out. That happens because of that, because your brain can handle that sort of thing. And basically, has created a habit loop. 

It's the same reason when he left his position last year, and he was no longer going to the office on a regular basis, your habit loop changes. So, normally my habit loop for driving to the office was the same every day, he would do the exact same thing, the exact same route, whatever it was, well, on two different occasions, at the end of the year, last year, he was driving in the direction of where his old office was. And he looked up and pretty soon, like he’s driving towards the office, he’s going the whole wrong direction for where he was headed. But his brain engaged this habit loop that his brain thought, “Oh, you're doing the habit loop, we haven't done in a while to go to the office.” And then he ended up on the entirely wrong road and everything because he was going to the office. But that's the idea of unconscious competence that you want to get to is be able to create those habits so that things just happen for you on a regular basis.

Me: So, just want to remind our listeners, Darby's book is out, available on all platforms that you would want to purchase a book from, I would definitely recommend that you go and consume some of the great content he has in it. I haven't fully finished reading it, but the parts that I have been able to garner were really, really insightful. And he was able to share a bit of it with our listeners in the conversation today. So, definitely a must have read for 2024. Thank you so much for sharing Darby.

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Darby shared that from his perspective, it's LinkedIn just because of the industry that he’s in. It is definitely the one online resource he could not live without. There's a lot of things out there, of course, especially with social media, and everything nowadays, it really depends on the industry individuals are in but for him, LinkedIn is it and definitely those who are listening, you can find him on LinkedIn, he will connect with you just search for Darby Vannier, and he’s happy to connect with you on LinkedIn as well.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Darby

When asked about books that has had a great impact, Darby shared that there is lot of books that certainly he has utilized over the years. But there is one book that he has bought and given away more copies of this book than any other book. 

And it's a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, it's by a woman, her name is Susan Cain. And it's about kind of leading as an introvert. And the reason that he liked it is that he knows it doesn't always seem like it to individuals when he does these podcasts that he loves to speak to people and stuff like that. But he’s a pretty big introvert. And it was the first book that he read that he was like somebody actually gets him. 

So, she kind of talks about what it's like to be an introvert and how it's kind of a spectrum. And there are certainly individuals who are introverts who have no desire to speak to people, for example. Whereas, he loves that, if he gets a group of 1500 people to speak in front of great, he’s happy. Now, he doesn't want to step down off the stage and talk to you one on one really, afterwards, he'll do it. And you won't necessarily know that he’s uncomfortable. But that's not his comfort zone. 

So, every introvert’s a little bit different and it's more about how your energy is recharged. So, his energy is recharged by quiet time and being alone. He has no problem going on a vacation for a few days and being by himself the entire time and not talking to anybody, that would freak out an extrovert. But the reason he loves the book is and that he’s given it to both introverts and extroverts. And the reason it's important for extroverts to read as well is you work with a lot of introverted individuals and this world we live in is catered to extroverts. And it can be incredibly difficult for those of us who are introverts to live in. And we are forced to adjust to you all. 

So, he encourages extroverts to read this book as well, because you really learn a lot, especially as you lead and manage people, it will help you better manage individuals, it will also help you understand how to take advantage of utilizing the skills and the experience of introverts that maybe an extrovert doesn't necessarily have. So, from a professional standpoint, he always recommends, he also recommend it for individuals who are married, who have spouses who maybe are the opposite of them, because it will help you to totally understand your spouse a lot more as well.

What Darby is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s excited about, Darby shared that he’s still under a year on totally breaking out on his own and building his own company. So, building his business is what he’s really passionate about right now. He’s working on a new speaking topic regarding the impact that leaders make in the world and even over interactions that they might have considered insignificant. So, it's kind of like the ripple effect, so he’s working on this talk and he’s excited about that as well to be able to talk to folks about that. 

And then just really working to help each one of his fractional leadership clients be as successful as possible. It is so amazing to be able to work with multiple clients and see individual companies continue to grow and scale and to have a part in that as well.

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Darby Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Darby shared that he doesn't really have a quote, but he kind of have more of a philosophy and his philosophy with this. And he uses this again when he coaches other leaders too is, “Everything is temporary. And the one thing you have to remember is, is that everybody around you is going through their own stuff.” So, he always encourages people to be kind when you're dealing with other individuals, because you don't know what's going on in their lives, no matter how well you think you know them, you don't know everything that's going on. So, as he encounters adversity, he tends to kind of revert back to, “Okay, let's control what I can control. And then I need to let the other stuff go.” 

He certainly has had multiple times in his career where he’s had some very difficult situations that he’s dealt with professionally. And that's what he’s come back to is okay, can you control this particular thing that's happening? No. But you can control these other two aspects of it and you can make sure that you do those things really well. 

And what he has found is if he does that, and he just remember that this is just one more piece of experience in his life and in his career, part of that past history that he said that makes us all who we are, if he can remember that, then it's usually easy to get through those things. Not that it's not a challenge, still can be a challenge, still can be stressful, but it does definitely help you as you move through those challenging times.

Me: All right. So, we will definitely have that summary of what you shared with us in terms of that, quote, or that thought, that helps to get you from one stage to the next if for any reason you feel derailed.

Where Can We Find Darby Online

Website – www.beindispensable.com

Facebook - Indispensable Leadership Group

LinkedIn – Indispensable Leadership Group

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/darbyvannier/

Me: Now Darby, thank you so much for hopping on our podcast today and sharing all these great insights from your book, as well as all of the experience and exposures that you've had over the years that have crafted the person that you are today and the invaluable knowledge and experience and coaching that you've been able to offer to your clients. And so, the information that you shared with us was extremely valuable. The examples that you gave, the characteristics and the comparison as it relates to having a bit of both is critical to the organization success as a manager and a leader was really, really, really insightful and I just want to extend a great amount of gratitude to you for taking time to share with us today.

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

Links

•     The Indispensable Leader: How to Use Your Inner Manager and Visionary to Achieve Leadership Success by Darby Vannier

•     The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

•     Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking Susan Cain

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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.

Barry Klein is Vice president of Success and Enablement at Austin-Based Talroo, the data driven job and hiring event advertising platform that helps businesses reach the candidates they need to build their essential workforce. Barry provides leadership to Talroo’s team of Customer Success Analysts who have both revenue and customer service responsibilities for multiple verticals. 

Passionate about establishing “customers” as “partners”, he focuses on long-term relationships, lifetime value and establishing raving fans. With more than 30 years of experience in customer-facing and executive roles, including Vice President of Sales Engineering for Vignette Corp, Barry also spent several years running his own small business and consultancy. Barry holds a BS in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Questions

·    We always like to hear from our guests in their own words, how did you get from where you were to where you are today?

· Can you share with our listeners a little bit about why you believe recruitment is so important as it relates to customer service delivery?

· In terms of how do we hire well and focus on cultural alignment? And I imagine this begins in the interview process. What are three main things that you believe if you're tasked with that responsibility for an organization, where would you put your focus, maybe three top areas that you put your focus on if we're trying to get cultural alignment?

· Now, 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 our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.

· Can you share with us also, what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·  Where can listeners find you online?

·  Before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or there was an obstacle or hurdle that was presented to you and it caused you to not be on track but when you thought of that quote or when you recited that quote, it kind of got you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Barry’s Journey 

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So, I know we read your bio that gives us formally how it is that you got to where you are today, but we always like to hear from our guests in their own words, how did you get from where you were to where you are today?

Barry stated that he appreciates Yanique asking and thanked her for mentioning his alma mater, RPI. As he said, he was a Computer Science Major and he was in college in the late 80s. So, the world of programming was very different than it would be today. But he wrote a lot of codes, in fact, when he went to his parent’s house years after he graduated, and he saw the Dot Matrix Paper printouts of the code he had written, he was like, who wrote this, he couldn't in a million years, he couldn't have recreated that code.  

But by the time he graduated college, he knew that while he enjoyed coding very much, and it was why he went to get a computer science degree, he done enough. And what he became intrigued about was the intersection of the technology and people.

And his first roles out of college were not really tech support per se but sort of high-end engineering support for customers who are developing with their platform and that led him closer to customers. 

And what he found he really enjoy and what he imagines he’s best that if he has to choose his best skill is, is explaining and painting a picture about technical topics for non-technical folks, that is very gratifying. 

It's allowed him to have experience both with frontline decision makers, frontline influencers at any given customer, as well as executive suite folks who need these pictures drawn and need that insight. And he really enjoyed that, and he especially enjoy not only doing that himself, but enabling teams to do that with best practices, all the nuance that you need when you're in that customer facing role, whether it's pre sales or post sales, not just what you say, but how you say it. All of those things come together to create the kinds of roles that are always dynamic, and no two days are ever the same.

The Importance of Recruitment as it Relates to Customer Service Delivery

Me: So, a big part of what you're doing at your current organization is recruitment, correct? So, can you share with our listeners a little bit about why you believe recruitment is so important as it relates to customer service delivery, maybe connect the dots so that our listeners can have a good understanding of why having good recruitment techniques is critical to ensuring that you are aligned properly to get the kind of deliverables that you're looking from as it relates to customer service.

Barry shared that it is an interesting intersection because the skills and mindset of customer success folks is something that would exist regardless of what the industry you happen to be in is, but in their case, because Talroo is a talent matching platform that strives to match opportunities, especially for frontline workers with having the frontline worker at the right job, in the right place, at the right time, for the right price, so that they get the happy connection between an employer who needs the talent and the person who has the talent, making that connection is very gratifying and their entire platform is aligned around that. 

And it does create an interesting mindset for them because they're helping employers recruit and then you say, “Well, how does that affect our own recruitment? What are we looking for? What are the processes? Everything from how do we source our candidates to how do we interview them to how do we determine their cultural alignment with our organization?” 

So, all things recruitment is really near and dear to their heart. 

And the other thing that makes it fun is, what they do is at an intersection of such a huge part of the economy, he can't read a newspaper or put on CNBC or watch a business channel, and not have them talking about the unemployment rate and the impact. So, they are really in the forefront of all of that.  

But one of the things that they've really been focusing on as they craft where Talroo is going is very personal to him in terms of how he recruits and who he hires and who he looks for. One of the things they're seizing on as sort of their mission is improving the lives of both employers and candidates, one person at a time. And he loves that tagline because it captures how personal it is, it's one person at a time.  

And he believes in a leadership role, the single most important thing that you can do is hire well, that is absolutely the single most important thing, if you hire well, most things take care of themselves, you hire well, you train well and you correct hiring problems quickly, if you've made a mistake, if you don't have that proper connection, that's always very painful, if you have to do that.  

And then really the role he believes of a leader is to create the environment in which these talented people who are motivated and intelligent, where they can succeed. So, he often says he doesn't do any real work, the thing that he’s most proud of is creating an environment in which these folks can succeed, get the political stuff out of the way, and set them up for success. And if we found the right people who are customer success oriented, whether that service-oriented heart, they can then teach them what they need to know about their technology, their solution, but if they are the right cultural fit and the right kind of person, then they're 80% of the way there.

Areas to Focus On To Achieve Cultural Alignment

Me: So, I like the fact that in your explanation just know, you spoke about cultural alignment, and I think I would love for you to go a little bit more granular as it relates to that in terms of how do we hire well and focus on cultural alignment? And I imagine this begins in the interview process. Are there some key questions that you think may need to be asked? Does it boil down to the advertisement that you put out in terms of who you're attracting to apply in the first place? Where do you start? And maybe what are three, I would say main things that you believe if you're tasked with that responsibility for an organization, where would you put your focus, maybe three top areas that you put your focus on if we're trying to get cultural alignment?

Barry stated that it is a huge topic for them and in fact, he was just speaking with her CEO and they were thinking back on some candidates who didn't work out, not his organization per se, but across the company. 

And in every case, when they violated in a sense their own rules, not that there are hard and fast rules, but when they looked past a lack of cultural alignment, the candidate didn't work out. 

And they have a very formal process whereby, typically, it's done by their HR Department as part of the interviewing cycle, where a series of questions that are available are asked, in theory, the same topics would have come up in the other interviews with you want a candidate to meet some peers, of course, he interviews them as the hiring manager, and then they meet with HR. 

And he will tend to focus on interpersonal relationships and problem solving. When you look at their values and we've written them down and he thinks so many companies these days happily have their pillars of their culture on their website, whether they live by them, it's hard to say. He appreciates candidates who challenge them on those things and want to make sure that it's real.

But they talk about things like being customer first, they talk about teamwork, they talk about accountability. He will and others, he will focus very much on the teamwork aspect of things and conflict resolution all with an eye toward, are we doing the right thing for their customer and for themselves, he can become a Johnnie one note around win-win scenarios. He has no interest in someone who is so accommodating of a customer that they might put his company at risk. 

They look for partners and they don't say that in a glib fashion or as a soundbite, it's true. The nature of their business is such that if they have a customer who just wants them to service them and does not want to meet them at an appropriate point, in terms of communication and keeping data flowing and sharing reality, what's going on, if they're not a real partner, they don't do well with them. 

And so, he needs customer success folks who understand that, who understand how to deal with conflict, who can navigate the complexities of those interpersonal relationships. 

So, they'll ask questions around, of course, “Give him a scenario where you and a colleague were out of alignment and in disagreement, what did you do?” And you will hope that the candidate is honest and doesn't just tell you what you want to hear, normally you can figure out if they're telling you what you want to hear. 

But that ultimately leads them to the single most important question in their values alignment survey when they take a candidate and they ask them to meet for half hour with their HR Department, the single most important question came out of a real life scenario with their CEO actually, where it led to the following question, “You go to a restaurant and you have your iPad on the front seat of your car, you park your car, and you don't lock the door, when you come back, the iPad is gone. Whose fault is it?”  

And it's a fascinating question because what they are looking for is, “It's my fault.” 

It doesn't mean the thief doesn't have some accountability. 

And it doesn't mean that the restaurant might not have a more secure parking lot.  

But in the end, you left a valuable item out in the open with an unlocked door, they didn't even have to smash the window, they just opened the door and took your very expensive piece of equipment. How do you not think that was my fault? I live in the real world, I have to have accountability for that kind of thing. 

It leads to interesting discussions; they've had discussions around none of us ever want to blame a victim in the course of a crime being committed. 

And the reason he liked that scenario so much is the car wasn't even violated. Were you a victim? Or were you just dumb? You invited someone you say, “Please rob me!” 

If he leaves his front door unlocked, okay, you blame the thief, you shouldn't be robbed, society shouldn't allow that to happen. But you know what, he lives in the real world, he locked his door when he leaves. 

So, those kinds of questions really matter. And that question in particular, and he will tell you, he’s very pleased, their candidates are honest, and their HR folks take very good notes, offer their own opinions. He'll go into their ITS and read those notes. And that's the question he’s looking for.  

Are you personally accountable for your actions? 

You can give 10% to the thief and you can give 10% to the to the restaurant, but if you're not thinking that you're 70% or 80% responsible for that, you might be looking for excuses as to when things don't go your way. And they're just too small a company too and they wear too many hats for anyone who has that opinion.

Me: Wow, I love that question. Thank you so much for sharing very, very good one.

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

When asked about an online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Barry shared that it's funny, he hates to have it be the technological death star of our industry that he’s dealt with since he got into technology. But really it's their day to day tools with Microsoft, they are a Teams shop and they are finding more customers who are using Teams, of course you have Teams aficionados, and you have a lot of folks who are passionate about Slack. But they're using Teams and informally don't tell their IT Department they have some Slack channels going too. But that kind of real time communication with themselves because his team is fully remote. And so, their ability to stay in real time communication and in many cases in real time communication with their customers is proving ever, ever more valuable, they couldn't live without it at this point.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Barry

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Barry shared that it's fun to think about, currently he’s been enjoying reading history, the historian and he is a professor at Vanderbilt University, Jon Meacham is his name. He's the kind of fellow who when he's a guest on a news programme, and he finds him and he sees him, he’s actually glad they're talking about it. He’s hoping there's a way to sign up for when is Jon Meacham going to be on TV so he can go find him. He hangs on his every word and it's the kind of guy you kind of wish he was your grandfather telling you stories about the world in the past. 

His biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have been his latest readings. And he enjoys that because, a, he enjoys the break from technology and what they do every day, get his brain around something else. But it's the lessons from these great thinkers like a Thomas Jefferson as presented by a great thinker in the form of Jon Meacham where he finds himself reading his books with a highlighter, because it's not just the observations, the historical observations, but his observations when he ties these topics together. So, he always finds that fascinating, especially from a leadership standpoint.  

And it's funny, the other thing that comes to mind is, it's again, he’s so much older than probably many of the listeners, but when he was in high school, he read a book by a gentleman named Roger Kahn, he became famous for his book, The Boys of Summer, which was about the 1950s, 40s and 50s, Brooklyn Dodgers. 

And he wrote a book called Good Enough to Dream. And it was about his ownership stake in a minor league baseball club in Utica, New York. And the opening line has stayed with him, “The first dream full of innocence and sunlight is to play the game.” which he always loved. But early in the book, he says to someone who's associated with the team, “Are these guys any good?” And the response was, “They’re good enough to dream.” And that has always stayed with him. “Am I the best at something? Is my company the best at something?” He doesn't know, but they're good enough to give it a try and see where it leads them. And that's always stayed with him.

What Barry is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Barry shared that within his organization, he doesn't mind doing a commercial for the product Gainsight, which is the customer success platform. They recognized about 15 months ago as Talroo was growing both in terms of their customer base and their staff, that as a Salesforce shop and as a Microsoft shop, the needs for customer success weren't being met, in terms of what do they need to record? What do they need to predict? Do they have a sense around who will keep their contracts going, versus who is at risk of cancelling. 

Just as a quick sidebar, Talroo, unlike a typical SaaS company does not have a long-term contract, they have to earn their customers business every month, they can cancel at will.  

And so, it creates unique challenges and a real time need to know what's going on with each customer. And so, about 15 months ago, they embarked upon a project to implement a customer success platform. They ultimately chose Gainsight, he will say for anyone who is looking for a customer success platform, all of the players in the industry who they looked at were terrific, he doesn't think you could go wrong. ChurnZero to Tango, others, they were all first-class organizations, and they happened to choose Gainsight and that became an immediate game changer and continues to be. 

And so, thank you for the question about what he’s focused on? Where are they growing? How are they evolving?  

When they first rolled out Gainsight, it was primarily to support their efforts to track and manage and deal with renewals and even upsells are very important for upsells with their direct customers, employers who come to them and say, “Talroo will work with you directly to please advertise our jobs out in the world.” And that's what they really started with for the majority of their first year with the product. 

But he has other caliber of customers who his team has to look after, including advertising agencies, and including job boards who they've had relationships with for years, who send them their jobs to advertise. And the needs are different across those different caliber of customers, and getting Gainsight rolled out now for the other members of his team and candidly getting adoption of it.  

One of the things they've done very well and that he would encourage anyone thinking about any large software purchases, the people can kill a project. If any given team refuses to use Salesforce, Salesforce will fail. If any team refuses to use Gainsight, Gainsight will fail, people can win, and really torpedo a project. 

So, they've done a really good job of getting buy in, forming a user council, the gentleman who is Andy Trevino, who is their administrator and RCS Ops Manager, who looks after Gainsight is always open to feedback, he's always soliciting feedback, so that they can make the solution match the way they work. He doesn't like software solutions where they have to change their behaviour in order to accommodate the tool, he wants the tool to accommodate the workflow and the processes that they already know work. And as they roll out the usage of Gainsight to this extended team, their needs are very different than their counterparts who work with their direct customers. So, getting that right is important. 

And that accountability is incredibly important, because he no longer could afford and one of the reasons they went with Gainsight and started this whole project was when he wants to ask the very simple or get an answer to what he hopes would be a simple question of what's going on with fill in the blank of the customer name, it shouldn't take him 20 minutes to figure it out. 

He needs all the information in one place and they're doing a terrific job of that with Gainsight with their direct customers, and getting members of his team who aren't used to it and haven't had to use it in the past, he needs to bring them along and their feedback. And he needs to make sure the product gets built out in a way that makes their lives easier, and that they see the value of it and that it's not just busy work, it's not just bureaucracy, it's that they really are using the product to make their lives better and then he gets what he needs in a leadership role, their C suite gets what it needs when they have questions about what's going on with the customer. 

Many folks may have thought of this or use this line, traditionally, it's with Salesforce, they would say, on the sales side, if something isn't recorded in Salesforce, it didn't happen. That's the source of truth and that's where he’s going with Gainsight, if you don't have notes and details and specifics in Gainsight, then it didn't happen. And you don't want to do that for bureaucratic reasons, you want to do it because it makes the organization better and your customers more successful.

Me: Awesome. So, Gainsight is where you have most of your head wrapped around right now and just trying to build that out.

Where Can We Find Barry Online

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/klein-barry/

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Barry Uses

When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Barry shared that he has two, one is more serious than the other but the other, the funny one was his high school yearbook quote, but he will say plainly, he’s not a praying or religious person by nature, but he will go back to, “Dear God, grant me the strength to change the things I can, accept those that I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  

It really gets hard to know where you need to invest your time and energy.

What should you care about?

What do you need to back off of?

What can't you change? 

So, the wisdom to know the difference between what you can change and what you have to accept is something he thinks about a lot. 

The more fun quote is from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, in the episode in which the character Chuckles The Clown is tragically killed, because he is the master of ceremonies for a parade. And he gets run over by an elephant dressed as a peanut, which leads to a ridiculous number of jokes and things about a man dressed as a peanut killed by an elephant. But because he was a clown by nature, his quotes, and the things that he did become a big part of the show. And his (Barry) high school yearbook quote was, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.” Moments of stress, you know what, how serious can life be? “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

Me: I love it. Okay, Barry, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on our podcast today and sharing all of these great insights as it relates to cultural alignment and recruitment, ensuring that you're getting the right fit to ensure that you're able to meet the deliverables and as you mentioned, just mitigating against the wrong fit and mitigating against challenges and issues that could have been prevented had the recruitment been aligned and selected properly from day one. So, I thought it was a great conversation and I just want to say, thank you so much for taking time and sharing with us today.

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

Links

•     Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

•     American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

•     The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

•     Good Enough to Dream by Roger Kahn

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!

Cynthia Kay founded Cynthia Kay and Company media production which produces high-quality communications for organizations from Fortune Global 100 to small business. A graduate of Michigan State University, Kay holds a master's in communications from Western Michigan University. 

Cynthia Kay is a passionate spokesperson for small business. For more than 35 years, she has spent significant time speaking to, teaching and coaching small-business owners while running her own award-winning company. She is the Past Board Chair of the National Small Business Association (NSBA). 

Cynthia and the company have been honoured with many awards including many Tellys and Woman Owned Small Business Supplier of the Year from Siemens in 2018. She has been named one of West Michigan's 50 Most Influential Women five times, and is the recipient of over 30 broadcast awards from UPI, AP, and other news organizations. 

CK & CO Cynthia has authored several books. Her newest book, Small Business, Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business (Career Press 2024) is available for pre-order and will be on May 6, 2024. She writes for Entrepreneur.com, has been featured in Time Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine's Ask the Expert and on NPR.

Questions

·    We always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. Could you share that with us?

· Your book, Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about that book that you have coming up? And maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book represents.

·    You've been in business for 35 years, so you've been through all phases of a business over 35 years, not to mention the different experiences that your businesses would have had as it relates to the different travesties that the world had gone through. If you were to pick, let's say, one characteristic that you believe was critical for you to ride the waves over all those years to the point where you are today, what do you believe that would be?

·     Based on your experience, what would you say are maybe five common mistakes that you find small businesses tend to get themselves into? And if you could give maybe a recommendation for each as to how they could prevent themselves from getting trapped into that common mistake?

·  Now, Cynthia, can you also share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

·  Now, can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago or even one that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

·   Where can listeners find you online?

·  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or there's an obstacle that comes in your way, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Cynthia’s Journey

Me: Now, even though we ask our guests to provide us with a bio, which you did, amazingly, thank you so much. And we do read the bio at the beginning of the show so the audience has a good idea of who we're interviewing and what they’re about. We always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. Could you share that with us?

Cynthia shared that for her, it's an interesting story, she hoped it will be for the viewers as well. She actually started her career in broadcasting and was working in the TV business for about 13 and a half years. But she always had in the back of her mind that she wanted to own her own business. And she grew up in a family owned business so she saw her dad and how he worked and how much he loved what he did and his customers. 

And so, one day when she got fired and her dad always said, “Honey, you're no one till someone fires you.” She decided that rather than go and work for another television station and she had some opportunities to do that, she decided she wanted to bet on herself. And so, that's how she started her business.

About Cynthia’s Book – Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business

Me: Now, you have a new book that's being published in a few months, it's called Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about that book that you have coming up? And maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book represents.

Cynthia shared that she really believes that the best way for people to learn about business is by storytelling. And so, the book has not only her story, but stories of entrepreneurs and experts from all over the country. And frankly, that's what makes it so interesting because we all have stories to tell. But she’s segmented the book into stages and it is starting up, because the challenges at starting up are very different than the challenges for those who are in second stage or mature businesses. 

And then she looks at success at operations because she thinks many small businesses, that's a place that's very difficult for them is to really figure out how to become operationally excellent. 

And then success at growth because if we don't grow, we're actually going backwards. 

And then finally success at stepping out. And someone asked her, “Well, why cover such a broad expanse in one business? Why not just talk out starting up or stepping out?” 

And she said, when you take a look at the whole lifecycle of a business, if you understand that, especially at starting up, and you think about where do you want to end up? Are you growing a lifestyle business? Or are you growing a business to sell it? 

If you are in a growth phase, what do you need to really think about? Sometimes it's digging back into what made you successful at start-up and visioning the future? And then also thinking about what kind of legacy do you want? 

So, for her covering that expanse and she’s been in business now over 35 years, so she’s been through many phases of the business. She thinks has been reflective for her to kind of look at each one of those. 

And there's lots of things that she talks about, she’s talked about customers, it's so important that we understand customers and customer services, it doesn't matter if you run a retail operation or a manufacturing plant or a technology company. But she thinks understanding customers, that's a big overarching theme. 

Communications is huge, because it impacts so much of our business, and then also leadership, what does it take to lead a successful enterprise?

One Characteristic That Entrepreneurs Need to Survive Downturns in an Economy

Me: So, lots of very critical components that you mentioned in the book to running a business. Now, I know you told us about the overarching themes that the book represents and in your summary just now, you mentioned that you've been in business for 35 years, so you've been through, if not all, well, definitely all phases of a business over 35 years I'm sure. Not to mention the different experiences that your businesses would have had as it relates to the different travesties that the world had gone through, so the pandemic and before that the recession in 2008. So, you'd have had different experiences that different economies would have experienced, that the world experienced. If you were to pick, let's say, one characteristic that you believe was critical for you to ride the waves over all those years to the point where you are today, what do you believe that would be?

Cynthia stated that that one is easy for her. And she thinks this is something that people don't think about a lot, but it's passion. You have to have passion for what you do. If you don't have passion, you cannot survive all of the challenges that you have. She has experienced at least two downturns in the economy and COVID, obviously was huge. But if you don't love what you do, if you don't get up every day, and say, “Wow, what can I do today to make this business better? What can I do today to serve my customers?” 

If you don't have that passion, it's easy to get discouraged and she thinks it's easy to give up. And frankly, the businesses that she sees that kind of wither away, it's because they've lost that passion for what they do, it becomes routine and ordinary and in this world, especially in the world of business, you can't survive if it's just same old, same old, you must consistently innovate and to do that, you have to have passion.

Me: So, passion is a number one thing that was able to carry you through. Fantastic, thank you for sharing Cynthia.

Common Mistakes that Small Businesses Make and How to Avoid Them

Me: Now, Cynthia, I'm sure in running a business, there are some common mistakes that sometimes business owners will make, right, regardless of the type of business you're in, whether it's product based or service based. Based on your experience, what would you say are maybe five common mistakes that you find small businesses tend to get themselves into? And if you could give maybe a recommendation for each as to how they could prevent themselves from getting trapped into that common mistake?

Cynthia shared that she thinks the first one is not doing their homework. She thinks so often people believe they have a great idea or a great product, but they're somewhat clouded by their own bubble, by their own world. And so, one of the things that she will tell you is not doing your homework, not going out and saying to someone, not just do you like my idea, or do you like my product? But will you pay for it?

So, that's the first one. And the way that you really avoid that common mistake, quite frankly, is to do your research, and to go out and not be afraid to ask the questions. And sometimes she will tell you, she has put in place some efforts that she had to abandon because while she thought it was a great idea, she didn't maybe do enough of the homework to really understand if it was going to be successful. So, that'd be the first one.  

And then the second one is financially, can you really withstand the pressures that it takes. So, when she started her business, the first six months, she didn't even take a salary. And she thinks that's very common for a lot of business owners is that they invest in their business. So, are you able to financially withstand what it takes to be able to get through those first really tough years? So, do you have the financing? Do you have the capital? Can you withstand that interim start-up period where you really need to make sure that you have a lot of cushion maybe is the right way to say it.  

The third mistake that a lot of business owners make is that they take whatever customer comes to the door and she made that mistake when she first got started, she was so concerned about is she going to be able to pay the rent, that she maybe took customers that she shouldn't have taken because they didn't align with the goal and the core products and values that they had and that's a hard one is to say no to a customer. But if you're getting customers in the door that are taking up your time and taking up your energy and not going to help you move forward, then she thinks that that's a big mistake. And as a result of having made that mistake after she was in business for a while, she kind of had to send customers away and that's very difficult. So, having a good idea of who that ideal customer is and really knowing that. 

She thinks communication is a big one. Frankly, she thinks communication is something that business owners don't really spend enough time on, they believe if they have a great product or a great service, that's enough and it's not. You have to be able to articulate your value, you have to be able to communicate that value to your employees because that's so critical because it's not just you, unless you're going to be a solopreneur, which is fine. But if you're going to build an organization, you have to be able to communicate with your employees, you have to be able to educate them, have them understand what the value is of the business, and then being able to communicate to customers. The number one complaint that customers have today is sometimes they lack the communication from businesses, even if it's simply, “I got your phone call and I got your order, and we'll get back to you.” But being able to communicate and being able to articulate is a big one. 

And then she thinks the other mistake that she thinks a lot of small businesses make is they don't build an external team that can help them, because as a business owner, you're an expert in what you do, but that doesn't mean that you're an expert in all things.

And so, building that really critical team of outside resources, she likes to say who can keep you out of trouble because sometimes you get into trouble because you don't know enough. So, having that critical team of people that you can trust and can go to, she thinks that's it. So, those will be she thinks the five things that she would say are really important.

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

When asked about online resource that she can’t live without in her business, Cynthia shared that when she saw that question, she was like, there's lots of things she can't live without. Cynthia estimated that because of the business that she’s in, they have a tool, it's called Function Point that coordinates all of the efforts. In media production and in communications, consulting, there are so many pieces of every single job that all have to align and being able to track where something is and being able to understand who on the team is doing what, it's a communications tool. 

Now, that may be one that it's for creative agencies, but there are other tools. SharePoint, she thinks is a fabulous tool for keeping people really focused. So much of what we do today, there are so many pieces of information and keeping it organized she thinks is the biggest nightmare or it can be the biggest advantage. So, some sort of a communication tool that allows you to track and be able to measure where you are is really critical.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Cynthia

When asked about books that has a great impact, Cynthia shared that there are two that she really loves. And the one is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins and she’s read that book maybe twice and should go back and read it again. But the reason that she loves that book is that she thinks there is such a difference in just being good and really having a company and growing a company that is excellent. And she thinks today good is just the baseline, everyone expects if you're in business that you're good, but can you be great? So, that's one. 

The other one that she really likes is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey. We as people sometimes think we're effective, but we might be missing something. So, those are two that she really loves. And she'll be honest, she hasn't been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly because she’s been doing a lot of writing, so, she’s been reading her own book. But she does have a list of other books coming up that she would like to read. 

And then there's one other one that over the years she’s kind of steered people to and it's called Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Other Don’t by Simon Sinek. And she thinks so much of the success of organizations and businesses really rests with how effective is the leader, because the business takes on sort of the personality of the leader. So, that's a book that she always recommend because she thinks this idea of servant leadership is one that really can catapult an organization ahead.

Where Can We Find Cynthia Online 

LinkedIn – Cynthia Kay

Website – www.cynthiakaybiz.com

Website – www.thinkck.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Cynthia Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Cynthia stated that it's interesting, there are so many quotes that she loves, but her father was a huge influence in her life and there's a quote that her dad always used to say when she faced adversity, and she was struggling and didn't know what to do and he would always say, “Do what's in your heart.” And she really believes that if you look inside, you often know the answer. And so, that's one that she always remember, her dad always said, do what's in your heart. 

And his second favourite one was, “They can't pay you enough money to do a job you don't love.” And so, that's her second one.

Me: I love it. Is the second one attributed from your dad as well?

Cynthia said absolutely. He was a wonderful businessman. He ran a small business with his two brothers and so much of what she thinks, they learned, they learned by osmosis. She learned a lot about business by watching her dad. 

Me: That's fantastic. So, thank you so much for sharing those two quotes, we'll definitely have them in the show notes of this episode. 

As we wrap up our episode, we would just like to extend our deepest level of gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast today and sharing about your journey, a little bit about your new book that will be released in May of this year. For those of our listeners that would love to tap into that resource, we'll have Cynthia's contact information in the links for the show notes of the episode so you can definitely follow along and just be abreast of when the book is going to be released and the different platforms that it will be available on so thank you again, Cynthia for coming on and we wish you all the very best.

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

Links

•    Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

•     The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey

•     Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!

Serena Chan is a Research Advocate at Dovetail with a background in exploratory and UX research. She plays a pivotal role in crafting memorable experiences for customers, advocating for them within the company and partnering with people who do research to build a community and best practices at Dovetail. 

Before joining Dovetail, Serena held UX design research and product roles across various industries, including health tech, entertainment and social enterprises. Passionate about democratizing research, she champions the importance of prioritizing insights from customer-facing teams to drive the development of truly customer-centric products. 

Serena holds an MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts, though her academic journey started with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Her early career spanned roles in public health, during with which she was inspired by the intersection of design thinking and global health at a transformative conference.

A poet and community gatherer, Serena leverages storytelling at work and leisure to facilitate a more deeply connected, equitable, and regenerative future for all. 

Questions 

·     Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey.

·      Could you tell us a little bit about Dovetail and what your company does?

·     Now, as a subject matter expert in the area of customer experience, could you give us maybe two or three, I would say areas that you believe organisations need to focus on as we continue to traverse through 2024 and beyond?

· If you were to pick one organisation, what would be, let's say two or three characteristics that they have that makes you loyal to them and keep going back over and over again?

·   Now, could you also share with our audience, what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

·    Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read that have had a big impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it's had a great impact on you.

·     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? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Serena’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey. I know I read your bio, and it kind of gives us a quick summary of the journey that you did have to get to where you are today, but we'd love to hear from you, in your own words, how is it that you got to where you are today?

Serena shared that one of the earliest jobs she’s ever had was in customer service, customer experience. So, she thinks that's been quite the through line in her career and why she’s also sort of excited to be here today. 

Starting from her first job in private tutoring when she was just in high school, to volunteer work and working in customer service jobs, there's some element of being of service and working with people that she was always drawn to. And after graduating college, it led her into the world of health tech start-up and joining a customer success team for the very first time. 

And for her, that was the first opportunity to really be that bridge between hearing their customer needs, and sharing that back with their product team, helping you have that informer product roadmap and innovation and business strategy. And working in that intersection, that hub really got her quite excited. So, that's kind of led her to continue to pursue her career from grad school to consulting and freelance work to now her work at Dovetail.

About Serena’s Company - Dovetail

Me: So, could you tell us a little bit about Dovetail and what your company does?

Serena shared that Dovetail is a leading customer insights hub, they work with lots of teams of folks, whether they're in user research, or product management, design, innovation, whether you're a software company, or they have some people also building physical products, some people building really large things in the world, like construction, machinery and things that are like tractors that farmers use to all kinds of software that we use in our day to day as well. 

So, they are a platform where these teams are able to really harness the insights they're hearing from their customers, whether it's customer interviews or survey data, things ongoing like CSAT and NPS and sentiment and have that then inform better product and decision making across the business as well. So, the work she does at Dovetail is really closely partnering with their customer teams, and coaching them in best practices from onboarding and being successful in Dovetail to how they can further grow customer centricity and the culture of that at their organizations.

Areas Organizations Need to Focus on As it Relates to Customer Experience for 2024 and Beyond

Me: Now, as a subject matter expert in the area of customer experience, could you give us maybe two or three, I would say areas that you believe organizations need to focus on as we continue to traverse through 2024 and beyond?

Serena shared that we're all navigating so much change. And one thing that she always returned to is just talk to customers, it's easier said than done for a lot of people. In her role, she does work with customers in the day to day, so that makes her job a lot easier. But for other people who maybe it's not the majority of how they spend their days, it can be hard to really remember, oh, yeah, let me go and actually get in front of customers, if you can't talk to customers, that's kind of point one, than two like, really leverage the type of customer data you already have. So, honestly, most of the people at their company who are talking the most customers are sales, customer success and support. 

And so, their product managers and their designers, they'll talk to customers, but they also try to go within their Dovetail workspace and pull from the interviews that they've already had, the customer calls their sales team has already had, the support tickets that have come through. So, if you can't go and talk to customers immediately yourself, then draw from those who are talking to your customers day in day out, that was kind of step two. 

And then point number three is really trying to kind of complete the loop, she’s really lucky that their customers are also some of the best at giving feedback and sharing their insights and their requests, because they're also people in the space of customer experience. And so, trying to really complete that loop and try to bring them along the journey. They're trying to do more ways of running early beta and alpha kind of programmes to test new things. They're building up Dovetail, they're also trying to co design and really do more kind of participatory type of practices with their customers, bring them along the journey and have them be part of that process. 

So, really, those three steps, talk to customers, the second, talk to the people who do talk to your customers, and also leverage the existing data you do have. And then the third being kind of complete that loop and really make sure you're integrating the feedback you're hearing into your product and business decisions, and then share it back to your customers, because they're always super appreciative to hear that you're taking the feedback and how quickly they're moving and iterating on that.

Me: Now, I heard you mention in your feedback just know in terms of the three areas that you believe organization should focus on, that you are blessed to have customers who are very willing and able to give feedback. I'm not sure if that's cultural, but if you could maybe just give us a little insight. 

What if you are in a culture where it's hard to collect feedback from customers?

It's not very easy, they don't voluntarily give it to you and even when you intentionally seek it out, it's hard to kind of pin them down to get the information that you need from them.

What would be your best recommendation to approach if you're in a business like that?

Serena shared that think about kind of what are those first points of contact? Is it that someone is hearing about you through some marketing channels, or maybe they're talking to someone in the sales process, even those are important touch points and opportunities for insights, especially if you're trying to understand your customers motivations, their desires, she thinks those are actually some really powerful touch points that we can leverage more in general. 

Of course, there are teams that go out and do proactive research, whether it's user research or usability testing, things like that. And they tend to rely a lot on that. But there's also so much room to lean on people in other functions as well who are talking to customers day in day out. And even if they're not existing customers, talking to prospectives is really helpful, too. 

So, she learned a lot from sitting in with their sales team and understanding the needs and desires of their prospective customers and seeing how can they currently serve them?

Where are the gaps and opportunities? 

And then how can she bring that back to their product team, their leadership team and say, “Actually, these are the current needs we're hearing from people, people who are interested in buying our software, or have similar visions and wanting to really grow customers centricity and these are the things they are asking for, which we may or may not have at the moment yet.” 

So, she thinks these are some other kind of creative ways to talk to people who, unless you have a completely sales process where no one's talking to anyone, then that's maybe on the more rare side, but you probably have someone that's talking to your customers. 

And then also, her bias too is in the onboarding process, they have a pretty hands off approach as well, you can definitely self-serve and leverage Dovetail Academy and kind of learn at your own pace. But then they also do have a team of customer success managers, and that's kind of where she started at Dovetail was actually in customer success. 

And they work with so many customers in the onboarding process and that's also so much wisdom to learn what are your customers understanding, what is harder for them to understand, what are the common questions and challenges and pain points that are.  

In many ways, empowering their customer success folks to basically be like their frontline design researchers in a way, they're the ones who are often closest to the day to day pain points, as well as their support team that their customers are facing. 

So yeah, really explore kind of what are some ways you're already your current company is already talking to customers and try to get closer to those people sit in, sit along on their calls or watch the calls if they have that uploaded into a central place.

Characteristics of a Loyal Organization

Me: Now, Serena, as a customer, right, so I want you to kind of take yourself out of the role that you're functioning, providing service, but more so service being provided to you. If you were to pick one organization, and it's up to you if you'd like to share the organization, but I’m more focused on the traits or the attributes that the company has, if you were to choose one company that you really, really love? What would be, let's say two or three characteristics that they have that makes you loyal to them and keep going back over and over again?

Serena stated that she loves this question. For her, what's funny is actually, the farmers market came to mind, which isn't necessarily a company in a traditional sense, it's maybe more like a gathering place, a marketplace. But it's a place she loves and she thinks about why she loves it. And there's some amount of structure, you go and you know what to expect, you know what vendors are generally there but you also have options, you have a specific time and place as well. And for her, it's also this sense of community and kind of community gathering place, that's actually a big thing they're working to invest in and grow at Dovetail as well as how do they actually build a gathering place for people in research and design and product to come and gather and learn from each other. And she thinks that's a huge opportunity for a lot of companies to leverage that within their customer base. 

So, for her, she personally as a customer really enjoy being able to just meet other people in a very casual sense and feel that sense of community, whether at a farmers market, they're her neighbours, or as someone in like a customer experience kind of space like that similar to maybe conferences or virtual or in person meetups and events that vendors or companies may hold. So, leveraging that aspect of community, and then also having an element of discovery. There's some things that she knows and she can rely on and there's some elements of novelty that also keep her coming back. So, that's what comes to mind for her.

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

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Serena shared that she’s going to take it from a bit more of a personal approach to how she shows up in her work. And for her, it can be any kind of app, but for her, it's like a mindfulness practice app and tool, she sees that as very much a part of her professional toolkit. 

She personally have really enjoyed the open app recently. And why she says this is because so much of the work she does is to witness and listen to their customers, to facilitate workshops, whether with customers or internally. 

And she thinks so often, especially in the start-up world we’re really quick to want to fix things and want to solve things and iterate and pivot and all of that. And that's great, and it's necessary and it's important to move quickly. But if we're not taking the moment to pause and to truly listen and understand what it is our customers are sharing with us, and also how the greater industry and world is shifting to, then we can't do all the rest or it'll kind of be done in a haphazard way. 

So for her, actually, her mindfulness practice, her kind of deep listening and meditation practice is a core part of how she shows up in her work and with her customers and also in holding space as she facilitates internally with her teammates as well.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Serena

When asked about books that have had an impact, Serena shared that she really loves Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, this is a book all about the art of creative living. And for her, it has impacted both her professional and personal lives. And really the kind of one liner from it is like, “What is creative living, it's a life that is more driven by curiosity than by fear.” 

She thinks one of her strengths and being able to navigate a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity, especially in the start-up world, is her ability to kind of lean into curiosity, and not just operate out of reactivity or fear or all of that. 

And so, the more we're able to flex that and lean into curiosity when we're trying to understand our customers, lean into curiosity when there's a workplace challenge, or a product issue that comes up, lean into curiosity in terms of crafting our own careers and lives. This is kind of how we can apply that creative energy into how we show up in the day to day. So many of the listeners are deeply creative people whether or not you identify as an artist or designer or capital C creative person, but she thinks we as humans are deeply creative and the more we can channel that kind of energy, the better we are able to show up for our customers and our businesses and our communities and for the society as a whole.

What Serena is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s excited about, Serena shared that she recently adopted a dog so she’s newly a dog mom. He is actually napping, napping right next to me right now! And something she’s learning is you never really know how it goes when you are trying to love and care and train a rescue dog. 

He's brought so much joy into her life, he's brought a lot of wonderful trail runs and play and novelty and exploration. And she’s also lucky to have a dog friendly office so she brings him into work as well. And they like to joke that he's the Chief Vibes Officer. He's also bringing a lot of joy at work too, so in many ways, even though he is such a personal part of her life, he is also really helping her also build better bonds with her colleagues and he'll also show up in the back of a meeting room as she’s on a customer call. 

And so, sometimes she thinks even just remembering like, we're all humans, we are all trying our best, and people will see her dog and kind of, it just creates that kind of human connection. So, it's been a very special time and she’s learning so much every day and celebrating all their little and big milestones as they go and that helps her remind herself of her capacity to keep growing and learning and adapting to change.

Where Can We Find Serena Online

LinkedIn – Serena Chan

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Serena Uses 

When asked about quote that she tends to revert to, Serena shared that for her, it's “Ride the waves.” She’s a beginner surfer herself, but someone who's grown up swimming her whole life, so the water is a really restorative place for her but also challenging. She lives in San Francisco pretty close to Ocean Beach and these are some gnarly waves they get out there. And much with the tumultuous lives and professional worlds we live in and the changing world, sometimes all we can do is just show up and practice riding the waves and enjoying when things are calm, but also learning even when it feels stormy, we can get through it and just keep riding the waves.

Me: Well, thank you so much Serena for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast, sharing all of these great insights as it relates to customer experience, some of the things that you believe organizations need to be focusing on for 2024 and beyond. And of course, all the great things that your organization is doing. And we just really appreciate you taking time to share all of this great insight with us today.

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

Links

•     Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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

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!